


He Sleeps in the Sky of Ice

by jadencross



Series: He Sleeps, She Sings, They Listen [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bonding, But like everyone else is angsty too, Cool Aliens, Families of Choice, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Fluff, Gen, Langst, Made-Up Science, Memes, Reunions, Suffering, Super powrrful lion magic, Tags May Change, a lot of people cry, but sometimes they cry because they're happy, cause that just kinda happened???, post episode 11, this was not the plan, why did I put F.R.I.E.N.D.S references in here?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-07-27 11:18:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 55,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7616011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadencross/pseuds/jadencross
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been three months since the plan to rescue Allura, and Team Voltron has finally found each other again. </p><p>Well, almost. </p><p>A certain blue paladin didn't meet up with who he was supposed to. And now, the whole team has to figure out why. He wouldn't just abandon them.</p><p>Would he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Impossible Planet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol I haven't finished a fic yet but this I hope to make short so maybe it will??? Idk, man, just keep your fingers crossed.
> 
> Basically the end of season one was so abrupt I cannot stop thinking about it. I also enjoy that "torture your favs" thing we have going on here and wanted to join.
> 
> Also, I made up bs science/space stuff specifically for angst purposes do not question me.
> 
> As the description says, it takes place three months after the end of season 1.
> 
> (Also yes that is a doctor who joke. It was a complete accident.)

Keith was angry.

Well, Keith was angry a lot. It often caused fights over small things, or collections of bruises from over working in the training room, or him being expelled from schools he worked really hard to get into. Often people just assumed his only emotion was angry.

But this was a special kind of angry.

At first, it had been directed at himself. If he had just listened to Coran and not fought Zarkon alone, his lion wouldn't have been essentially useless for the past three months (though he'd never admit it), making him a sitting target and a dead weight his teammates had to come find.

But as three months dragged on, Keith got angry about something else: Lance was supposed to come get him.

The specifics of how alluded him, but through some telepathic mumbo-jumbo Allura could apparently only pull off once, she had mentally communicated with all the paladin's who were spread through space. She'd told them that each lion could only find one other lion for safety reasons, and they were circular in pattern, meaning Red could only find Black, Black could only find Green, yadda yadda yadda.

In the time they had, they had devised a plan to meet up, as everyone running for the first person they could would lead to a never-ending goose chase throughout the galaxy. The plan was that Shiro would find Pidge, and then the two of them would find Hunk. At the same time, Lance and the Castle were both supposed to find Keith (who, without a functioning lion, was incapable of finding others), and once Shiro and Pidge had found Hunk, they would follow Lance's trail to the Castle. 

The problem arose when Lance didn't find Keith. 

In fact, after some horrific jokes just before the connection cut off, no one had heard from Lance at all. 

Allura and Keith had met up two months ago. After a month of no Lance, Allura had checked to see if the other three had met up yet, and they had, but they seemed to be heading away from the Castle instead of toward it. With the warp gates still down, they had to begin the slow way and fly after them. A month later, and here Keith stood, waiting for Pidge, Hunk, and Shiro to board. 

Why didn't Lance come? Keith knew they had a rivalry going, but he never thought that it would be intense enough for Lance to abandon him. Lance  _knew_ that Keith's lion was broken, and that the faster someone got to him the better.

So why was there absolute radio silence? And why did it look like he had traveled farther away instead of closer?

Keith promised himself that the next time he saw that lanky, arrogant pilot he would have words. And maybe fists.

"Keith!" 

The cry pulled Keith from his thoughts in just enough time to be body slammed by a wall of yellow. Thick arms closed like a bear trap around his torso, and his feet left the ground as Hunk spun him around, tears leaking from his eyes.

Keith coughed a little, trying to breathe. "H-hi, Hunk."

Hunk's grip loosened almost immediately, and he dropped Keith, pulling him back at arm's length to make sure he hadn't crushed him.

"Sorry! Sorry, I just got so excited to see you because it's been so long and last I heard you were dead in space and we hadn't even discussed injuries from the battle with Zarkon and—"

"Hunk, you're rambling." 

Hunk stopped and looked over his shoulder at Pidge, who had her arms crossed and a look of happiness on her face. 

"Sorry," Hunk said sheepishly, taking his hands off Keith's shoulders. He perked up again when a whooshing sound signaled Allura and Coran's entrance into the room.

"Allura!" Hunk cried, his eyes welling up again. "Coran!" He bounced off and swooped the two up into a similar hug.

Pidge jabbed her arm into Keith's side. "Good to see you again," she said, her tone trying not to convey the smile she very obviously had on her face.

A cold hand landed on Keith's head and began to ruffle his hair. "Hey, Keith," Shiro smiled, coming to stand on his other side, "how have you been?"

"Oh, you know," Keith said, looking back at the Altean back-breaking before them, "just waiting for a certain blue stick in my side to show up."

Hunk froze.

"Lance isn't here?" he whispered, turning around slowly, his eyes wide.

"Nope," Keith shrugged. "We have no idea where he is. We eventually gave up waiting and went looking for you guys."

"We were following Lance, though," Pidge said, her brow wrinkling. "In fact, we stopped because Lance's lion is on the planet below."

"I  _was_ wondering why you guys were up here and not on planet," Hunk said, putting his hand to his chin.

"You all have been stopped here for days," Allura blinked in surprise. "I thought you had given up on finding him. I never was able to find him on my scanners. If he was on planet, why didn't you land?"

"We were trying to," Shiro said. "We just couldn't find a way to the ground." He turned to Keith. "But I guess if we have the Red Lion up and working, we should be able to make it down."

"What do you mean, 'trying to?' And why would my lion help you land?" Keith asked.

"Well," Shiro walked toward the huge windows, "just look."

All of them walked to see the planet Shiro was pointing at. It was at an odd angle, so it took some creative viewing positions to be able to see it. It just looked like a white planet to Keith.

"Ugh," Allura said after not being able to see in her third position. "I'll just move the castle." She did, and even got a little closer so they all could see better. 

Keith then realized the problem. The planet wasn't white; it was covered in ice. It glimmered in the light from the closest star, showing off a multitude of black specks of varying size that were stuck in the ice, though they were still too far away to tell what they were.

"Impossible," Allura said at last. "That planet's supposed to be half that size."

"From what I can tell," Pidge adjusted her glasses, "the ice formed a barrier at the very edges of the planet's atmosphere. I'm not sure how deep the ice is, but compared to the planet I don't think it's really that thick."

"That ice isn't naturally occurring," Coran said, bringing up the map. "See?" He pointed to the planet. "This planet has three Suns. It's mostly desert, and it has no night. That ice would have melted eons ago, if it had ever been able to form at all."

"We reached that conclusion, too," Shiro said, before gesturing to the planet, "but for a different reason."

At the inquisitive looks, Pidge tapped a few buttons to try to increase the zoom on the planet.

"All those black things?" Hunk said, his tone heavy. Pidge clicked a button and slice of the planet's surface was suddenly very large, and very in focus.

"They're Galra ships," Hunk said, his voice grim.

"I'm pretty sure we all have a good idea as to who did that," Pidge said. "Though I'm not entirely sure how."

Keith swallowed, his head reeling.

"Lance."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's chapter one, and let it be known that I wrote this at midnight and didn't get a beta so be kind. Also, idk on a lot of terms they use because I'm just bad at that stuff, so if you notice something tell me.
> 
> Also I literally have no idea how to spell Keith help. My heart says one way but my phone says another. Does it matter? Probably but it's 1 am.
> 
> I'll probably fix this later and write chapter two tomorrow, but by then I'll be conscious and will want to proof my stuff so it might be a bit.
> 
> EDIT: hey, its been fixed now! Thanks a lot to DragonDown for her marvelous work teaching me how to spell Keith and stuff. Because of our technology setup I gotta post an unbetaed work for her to edit, so first draft that goes up might be a little spotty so don't judge me please.


	2. Sandstorms and Spaceships

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so I just cranked this out. It's unedited, but it will be soon, I promise. 
> 
> For some reason I wrote this whole thing while listening to Johnny Cash. I don't know why.

“I’m still not sure how he did this,” Keith’s voice spoke through Hunk’s headset. They all were in their lions, waiting patiently for Red’s fire breath to eat all the way through the layers of ice (apparently Lance had done a _very_ good job because it had been hours and they were still going? The Red Lion had already disappeared down the hole it was so thick. When would it stop?).

“I mean,” Keith continued, “yeah, his lion’s got ice breath, but how in the world did he manage to put this much ice over such a big area? Did he just go crazy?”

“I suspect it has something to do with his lion’s protective instinct,” Allura’s voice spoke from back in the Castle.

“With its whatnow?” Hunk cocked his head.

“Well,” Allura supplied, “All of you at this point have bonded with your lions. That means that they understand your wants and needs on a very primal level. As such, they can move or act if their paladin is unable to but they still feel a strong need. The lions activate to feelings of fear, desperation, and helplessness.”

“Okay,” Pidge spoke up, “then why didn’t they take over when we were stuck in the heart of the Bulmera? Or any number of times since we’ve been out here? There have been quite a few times while waiting for Shiro that the lion moving on its own would have made things easier. And I _know_ I was feeling terrified and desperate.”

“It probably has to do with how many options the lion saw,” Coran said. “Clearly you’re still in your lion, so it saw a way out without it having to step in. It’s very hard for a lion to move on its own, so it only does it as a last resort.”

“So what you’re saying is that Lance somehow got into a predicament where he had no options and the lion itself had to step in?” Hunk asked. He looked over the icy surface, a lump rising at the back of his throat. They’d been here for a while, but as Keith dug through the ice, there seemed to be more and more ships. What kind of situation had Lance been in?

“Typical,” Keith muttered. Hunk could practically hear his teeth grinding. “He always bites off more than he can chew.”

“Hey,” Hunk frowned. “We don’t know if he wound up in this situation on purpose or not. All of us have been attacked by Galra forces numerous times since we were separated. He could have crash landed on the planet and the lion shot this up to protect him.” Hunk’s heart squeezed. He sure hoped that was all that happened.

“Maybe,” Pidge’s voice was softer, and Hunk thought that if they were face-to-face her brows would have been wrinkled, “but then why would all of the Galra ships be facing away from the planet?”

“They...spun?” Hunk offered up hopefully.

“Finally!” Keith exclaimed. Hunk nudged Yellow up to be closer to edge and found that he couldn’t see Keith anymore.

Pidge ducked into the hole. She let out a low whistle.

“Lance might not be the best pilot in the world,” she noticed, “but he sure knows how to cover a planet in ice.”

Shiro ducked through the ice next, Hunk on his heels.

It was amazing. Far below, he could see the planet. It was yellow and orange, with swirling clouds that dotted the surface. The air was bright and blue tinted, light filtering in between the frozen Galra ship to paint dark spots on the planet’s surface. The ice completely covered the planet, as they had suspected, but there was quite a bit of space between the end of the ice and the surface of the planet.

It was like being in a giant cave.

Hunk sucked breath through his teeth. Why had Lance created this cover of ice? If what Allura said was any indicator, he must have been in real danger. Plus, he didn’t like how many Galra ships there had been below the outer ones they had seen. Why were there so many?

They all flew towards the surface, the shadows passing over their lions and painting them different colors. Finally, the lions touched down on the surface, a soft sound of giant metal paws meeting dirt a happy sound for Hunk. All around, all he could see was desert. Heavy winds blew the sand swiftly over the planet’s surface, a stark contrast to the ice on the edge of its atmosphere. Hunk really hoped that Lance had stayed in his lion and didn’t have to be out in this climate.

A ding drew his focus from the sand to a screen on his dashboard.

“So we just have to find him and then leave, right?” Keith said.

“It would probably be best if we followed Hunk’s indicator,” Shiro said. “It would take too long if we just searched wildly.”

“Yeah, about that,” Hunk’s voice was unsure. “My readings say he isn’t on planet.”

There was a beat of silence before Shiro spoke up. “What?”

“Yeah,” Hunk was poking at the screen, the blinking blue dot _definitely_ not where he wanted it to be. “It says that he’s in the atmosphere somewhere.”

“So wait,” Keith sounded frustrated, “he’s in the _atmosphere_?!”

“Yes, that’s what the reading said.”

“Then why’d we fly down here?!”

“Chill out, man,” Hunk said. “Through all the ice it was really hard to get his exact signal like Shiro and Pidge both got. I thought it was because he was on planet. But apparently, he’s not.”

“So he’s in the ice?” Pidge asked, then paused. “Well, we probably should have expected that.”

“Yeah, but he shoots ice,” Shiro pointed out. “Why would he cover _himself_ in the ice, not just the Galra?”

“Maybe his lion panicked,” Pidge pointed out. “If we’re going with the _Self-Moving Lion_ theory.”

“The lion would not panic!” Allura scoffed. “It is a centuries-old technologically sophisticated and magically infused sentient creature! It’s wiser than all of us and was just following whatever Lance wanted. Lance’s desire must have been strange.”

“Lance’s desires are always strange,” Keith muttered.

“So do we fly back up to get him or—” Hunk was cut off by a harsh creaking through his lion. He could hear it through the comms and tell it wasn’t just him. Yellow swayed slightly, the wind having suddenly picked up. Hunk angled himself so the wind didn’t catch him on his broader side.

“Ah!” Pidge cried as Hunk saw Green’s paws lift from the ground. She rolled over a few times before slamming into Black, who, luckily, was large enough that Green only caused him to slide a little before Shiro dug his paws in a kept them both from being swept away.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to take off with the wind like this,” Shiro pointed out.

“What is happening?” Allura’s voice was tinged with worry.

“The wind picked up,” Shiro answered, clearly strained under the force of the storm and keeping Pidge in place. “The sand is making it difficult to see.”

“You all need to find shelter,” Coran spoke up, the sound of ticking keys accompanying his voice. “The sand might get in and gum up your lions, making you all unable to fly. And we can’t get through to help get them unstuck.”

“There’s a large structure not too far from you,” Allura said. “If you all follow the way Hunk is facing, you should run right into it. And please, hurry. Our scanners show that a large storm is headed your way.”

“I don’t know how well we can hurry,” Keith grunted. “I’m having a hard time just keeping Red from blowing away.”

“Hunk,” Shiro said, “You come over here and help keep Pidge from flying off. I’ll get Keith, since he’s larger. Keep each other from flying away, and we can make it.”

“Got it,” Hunk said. Keith grunted again in response.

Hunk maneuvered Yellow so that her head was on opposite side of Green as the wind, and began to push her forward.

“You’re going to have to tell me if you see it,” Hunk told Pidge. “Your lion completely blocks my line of sight.”

“Got it,” Pidge replied.

“Alright, team,” Shiro said. “Let’s just get to the shelter.”

“Meet you there,” Hunk replied, before pushing off. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but only succeeded in forming a knot in his gut.

He had a really bad feeling about this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise I'll update soon! Probably not nearly as fast at this chapter came out because good lord I've never cranked out two chapters on consecutive days. Actually, since I wrote chapter one at midnight, technically I wrote two chapters in one day. No wonder I'm worn out. 
> 
> Anyway, Next chapter should come fairly soon. And, as always, the more responses I get the more likely I am to write the next chapter sooner. Ta-ta for now! And thanks for reading!


	3. Windblown Away from Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo! Sorry it took so long to update this. I'm preparing to start college and so are the rest of my friends, so chapters will probably not be posted on a regular schedule for the next two weeks. Because of all the things we need to do, my editor hasn't had time to look at this chapter, but I was itching to post it so this (like the rest of them so far) is unedited. I'll get to it when I can, but the next two weeks are crazy so just let them slide.
> 
> That being said, enjoy Chapter 3!

When Allura had said “run right into it,” no one had planned on actually hitting the building. But alas, visibility was so poor that, even with Pidge on the constant lookout, she didn’t see it in time and the yellow and green lions came to a halt that began with Green ramming into a metal wall.

“Ow…,” Hunk groaned.

“I think we’re here,” Pidge said, rubbing her head.

“Where?” Keith’s reply was sharp. “I don’t see—oof!”

There was a loud scraping sound just to Pidge’s right, and she was suddenly able to see the red lion in the same predicament as her.

“Sorry,” Shiro winced. “How are we supposed to get inside?”

Pidge tried to angle her lion’s head up, and was only able to see an infinite wall going up. She couldn’t see much to either side, but she thought she saw a darker spot to her left.

“There,” Pidge pointed with Green’s nose. “To the left. It looks almost like an open hanger.”

“Good eye, Pidge,” Shiro said. “Hunk, the wind seems to be coming from the right, so you walk with Pidge between you and the wall and try to keep her from flying off. Keith, angle yourself so you’re right behind Pidge. My lion’s the biggest, so I’ll bring up the rear and try to block the wind.”

“Got it,” Hunk said. They all lined up and began to work their way toward the hole. Even though it wasn’t far away, they were moving slowly.

Finally, the wall to Pidge’s right ended. She practically dove into the hole, Keith right on her tail. Hunk and Shiro both entered, getting out of the wind.

The room was dark, but surprisingly big. Pidge switched on her lights, and everyone quickly followed suit.

“Oh no,” Pidge whispered.

“Is this…,” Hunk grasped for words, “is this a Galra base?”

“It looks that way,” Shiro said, his voice tense. “Take up defensive positions.”

“Wait,” Pidge said before anyone would move. “Where are all the ships? And why were the lights off?”

They all looked around. Even though this was a huge hangar, it looked like there were no ships or signs of soldiers anywhere.

Even more curiously, there seemed to be lines from lazer fire painting the walls, and debris of broken robots lay swept to the side of the hangar.

“That’s strange,” Shiro said, trailing off. “I wonder if this base is abandoned.”

“It looks like there might have been a battle,” Hunk noted.

“Paladins!” Allura’s loud voice caused Pidge to jump.

“Ah!” Pidge jumped, rubbing the side of her head. “Geeze, Allura, you don’t have to yell.”

“Oh good,” Coran’s voice seemed relieved. “We finally reached you. We’ve been trying for the last 90 ticks.”

“Listen,” Allura’s tone was serious. “The storm you all got caught in seems to be very large. It looks as if it will not stop until after what would normally be a day.”

“So it looks like you all are stuck there until tomorrow,” Pidge could practically hear Coran stroking his mustache. “However, I would be careful. We read a few life forms in the base you’re all in, but there don’t seem to be many. We can’t tell what they are, but they seem to be the only thing besides you all that’s alive on the planet.”

“We’ll stay up here,” Allura said.

“We can’t exactly fit through the hole, and the pods we have wouldn’t be able to withstand the wind,” Coran added.

“In the morning, we will take a pod and meet you for the search,” Allura finished. “Stay safe, all. And be wary of the air. Something on our scanners seems off.”

“Is it deadly?” Shiro asked.

“No,” Coran assured them, “but if you should start to feel light headed switch to reserve air.”

“Be safe, paladins,” Allura said.

“Alright team,” Shiro said after Allura clicked off. “Looks like we’re camping here tonight.”

“I think the first thing we should do is investigate those other lifeforms,” Pidge said, curiosity knocking hard against her head. “They might be Galra.”

“Good idea, Pidge,” Shiro said. “Everybody, park your lions, and we’ll head in.”

“What about the air?” Hunk asked. “Should we keep our helmets closed?”

“No,” Shiro said. “Coran said we should be fine.”

“O-okay…,” Hunk said, clearly not comfortable.

“It’s fine, Hunk,” Pidge assured him. “My readings say there’s just small traces of an element not found on Earth. I don’t think it will hurt us, though. And even if it could there’s hardly enough for that.”

“Okay,” Hunk still didn’t sound persuaded. “If you’re sure.”

Pidge got out of her seat and made her way to exit her lion. She kept her helmet open, trusting the readings. She summoned her bayard, and stepped out onto to hard ground.

Immediately, everything went fuzzy. The color of everything seemed to fade, and all the lions and everything else disappeared, except for her, only to be replaced by a whole fleet of Galra ships and hordes of soldiers.

Pidge jumped back, but her lion was gone to. Why was everything like this? Why had it all changed so suddenly? Why did the Galra suddenly appear? Where did the lions go? Where did the other paladins go?

And why did none of the soldiers seem to notice her?

Pidge stopped panicking quite as hard, but still kept walking backwards toward the wall. She eventually hit it, but it was shorter than she expected, and she flipped over backwards. She quickly sat up, trying to see if anyone had noticed, but all the soldiers kept walking the way they had.

No one noticed.

Pidge let out a sigh of relief.

“Okay,” the voice was right next to Pidge, and she pivoted as fast as she could to find Lance crouching right beside her, his face screwed up in concentration, bayard resting in one hand and the other up as if counting. The white of his suit was now a dirty grey, thin cracks lining the edges. Underneath the helmet, his face was marked with bruises, but Pidge could tell they were old. He seemed to be okay, at least.

Lance  didn’t seem to startle at Pidge’s sudden entrance at all.

In fact, he continued.

“If I do this, Keith will kill me,” Lance said in quiet whisper. “But, if I don’t, Pidge will kill me.” Lance held his two hands up like a scale, and he seemed to be weighing the pros and cons of whether he was willing to go up against Keith or Pidge.

“Lance!” Pidge whispered, relief filling her heart. “I’m so glad you’re—”

“Hunk would probably be on Pidge’s side,” Lance continued, completely ignoring the fact that Pidge was right in front of him. “Shiro probably would be, too, but that’s only because he knows them.” Lance paused again.

“Lance?” Pidge waved her hand in front of his face. “Can you hear me?”

“I don’t think Coran or Allura would be on Keith’s side either,” Lance continued again, not even referencing Pidge. He looked over the short wall at the sentries, still thinking. “That means I should do it, right?” His brow wrinkled. “But then again, if I fail miserably, like I seem to have been doing a lot, recently, none of them will be able to form Voltron. Plus, if they know I’m here, then they’ll look for Blue and find her. Ugh!” He threw his hands up and placed his back against the wall, sliding down. “Why is this so hard?!”

This wasn’t real, Pidge realized. At least, not right now.

Was it a memory? If it was, why could Pidge see Lance’s memory? Was she the only one who could see it? What had caused it?

Pidge’s eyes widened. Maybe it was that mysterious element she’d picked up earlier. Maybe it was causing it. How was up for debate, but it had to be it.

“Okay okay okay,” Lance seemed to calm himself down. He took a deep breath and let it out. “Voltron is supposed to be defender of the universe. That means the _entire_ universe, not just the easy ones. How could I be called a paladin if I didn’t try to rescue them?”

Wait, rescue? Who was Lance rescuing? Why?

Lance’s eyes seemed to go out of focus for a moment, his gaze somber. “And they really were suffering, weren’t they?”

After a pause, Lance slapped the sides of his face.

“Alright, Lance,” he activated his bayard, getting into a ready position, “you can do this. You’ll be fine. You...you may be a bad pilot, but you’re a pretty great shot.”

Wait, what? Did Lance just admit he was a bad pilot? He really must not be able to see Pidge.

“Okay here I go,” Lance whispered. “The blue paladin goes bravely into battle. I will _really_ deserve a parade after this.”

Lance then stood, and jumped over the wall, immediately shooting at the two closest guards. He took them both down and shot across the room, the other sentries starting to run after him.

“Lance!” Pidge cried. She stood to follow, but everything started to fade. Afraid that she was losing the memory because Lance was leaving her position, she jumped over the wall and started to run after him.

The color kept fading, no matter how fast she ran. Eventually, it all disappeared and the present came back—and she slammed straight into the back of the black lion.

“Ow…,” she said, rubbing her head.”

“Pidge, are you okay?” Pidge cracked an eye, and saw a very concerned Shiro standing over her.

“I’m...I think I’m okay,” Pidge rubbed her head. Shiro offered her a hand, pulling her to her feet as a very worried Hunk ran up to them.

“What the heck was that?” Hunk asked.

“Wait,” Pidge looked him in the eye, “you didn’t see it?”

“See what?” Hunk blinked.

“All we saw was you suddenly back into a wall, then sprint straight into the black lion,” Keith said, standing next to Hunk.

“Interesting…,” Pidge placed her hand on her chin.

“What did you see?” Shiro placed a hand on her shoulder.

“I saw Lance,” Pidge’s words earning her a gasp.

“Wait what?” Hunk’s jaw was hanging open.

“I saw him crouched behind that barrier,” Pidge pointed behind her. “He was debating whether or not to rescue some people.” She paused, looking at the blackened walls.

“I think he was the one who did all this damage,” she eyed the robots.

“No way,” Keith said, his tone flat. “Lance wouldn’t be able to take down a whole Galra fleet. Much less one big enough to fill this base.”

“How did you even see that?” Hunk poked his two index fingers together repetitively. “Was it a hologram? If so why were you the only one to see it? Is Lance actually here? Is he stuck in a wormhole? Or an alternate dimension? Was that the past? Is he hurt? Is he _dead_? Was he showing you his memories because he was a ghost? Were you only seeing his memories, or did he actually take you back in time? Was he—“

“Hunk!” Pidge grabbed his arms, shaking him slightly. “I don’t think he’s dead. The way he was talking it sounded like Blue was on planet. We know that isn’t the case, so something must have happened after that. They were probably memories, though.”

“But how _were_ you able to see the past?” Shiro asked.

“I have a feeling it has to do with the mystery chemical of the day,” Pidge turned to him. She wished she had a computer to show them. “I don’t know how, but somehow it’s causing us to see what happened in the past.”

“Then why were you the only one who saw it?” Keith spoke up. “Wouldn’t we all have seen it?”

“Maybe the conditions have to be just right,” Pidge tried.

“Whatever the reason,” Shiro cut in, looking up, “it isn’t a priority right now. We have company.”

They all looked toward the door that opened on a balcony on the second level.

Seven eyes stared back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like the real reason I wanted to get this out so bad is so that y'all are left on an even bigger cliffhanger lol. Chapter 4 is already in the works, but I've only written about a third of it and I have almost no time to work in it right now, so have fun these next two weeks. I am literally aching to finish chapter 4 (and this whole fic) but I have to buy microwaves and stuff. 
> 
> I'll try to go through and edit it, and DragonDown said she'd get to it when she can. So stay tuned!


	4. Empty Shells

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so I'm not dead! I moved in successfully and last night I finally had the time to write a chapter. I tried to edit it all I could, but my beta moved to a different state and it having a harder time than me finding time to spend on AO3.
> 
> I don't know how you guys feel about OCs, but given the nature of a space story on a different planet it was kinda necessary to add some new characters, so I hope y'all don't mind.
> 
> I'll probably look over this more later, but right now I feel like I'm a little overdue to post a chapter so here it is! Enjoy!

The paladins activated their bayards, Shiro’s arm giving off a low hum as it began to glow.

Three creatures stepped into the light.

The first, and tallest, was large and purple, fur lining their entire body. They had two vibrant green eyes in their normal spots and a third in the middle of their forehead. The tips of two teeth poked out from the corners of their mouth, their ears resembling what Shiro had always imagined mermaids’ to be like. A long tail protruded from their back, and it twitched lazily in irritation.

The second was about half as tall as a human, and had yellow skin striped with moving patterns of brown that reminded Shiro of the surface of Jupiter back near Earth, and an extra arm sticking out from the top of their head. Long ears similar to a rabbit’s hung loosely by their face, the ends attaching them to their body hidden in a mop of sandy hair, just like the base of the extra arm.

The third and final was about the size of a Chihuahua and sat firmly on the shoulders of the furry purple one. It appeared to be a green blob, but their face resembled that of a cat with black eyes and whiskers of goo.

All of them wore the faded red clothes of Galra slaves.

“Those weapons,” the yellow one’s eyes widened, “and the lions…they are similar to his.” They looked at the purple one, eyes shining. “Maybe they are the friends he spoke of?”

“Excuse me,” Shiro called up, letting his arm relax. “Who is the person you think is our friend?”

“They _do_ resemble him,” the purple one noted. “But we should not trust so easily. For how much he tried to help us, he just doomed all of us in the end.”

“Hello?” Shiro called again, irritation beginning to form in his chest. “We can—“

“I say we at least ask them if they know him,” the yellow one replied.

“Hey!” Keith shouted, regaining the attention of the aliens. “We can hear everything you’re saying! The _polite_ thing to do would be to answer!”

The aliens paused.

“Bring them,” the blob spoke in a startlingly deep voice. “We will listen to them and find out if they really are his friends.”

“Come with us!” the yellow one called down, while the purple had already begun to turn to head back into the hallway. “There is a stairway over there. You can use it to come to the second level.”

“Thank you,” Shiro replied, before leading the group as instructed.

“There don’t appear to be any Galra here,” Pidge noted as they followed the three aliens down the menacing hallways. “And there aren’t any signs of fighting.”

“Why would they just abandon this base?” Keith asked. “I doubt that Lance could have made them all leave.”

“The Galra have not been here for a long time,” the blob’s ill-fitting voice echoing slightly in the metal hallway. “They left this base many cycles ago.”

“Their going was…bittersweet,” the yellow one added, twiddling what Shiro assumed to be similar in use to fingers. “It brought great joy to me, as the only Vitzkugian left on planet,” they paused, their strange mouth opening to take a breath. “But it also sealed our fate.”

“What do you mean?” Shiro tried for politeness. “What happened that day?”

“Of that, we aren’t entirely sure,” the yellow one placed all three arms up, their ears pulling slightly towards the rear of their head.

“He betrayed us, is what happened!” the purple one exclaimed, suddenly whirling around to face the yellow one. “The paladin betrayed us! He got what he came for, then he left in his giant lion and trapped us here to die!”

“Enough, Kyrztak,” the blob silenced them. He shifted his gaze towards Shiro, mistrust lining his eyes. “We have arrived, strangers.”

Shiro looked around. The room was large, the ceiling vaulted high above even Kyrztak’s head. There was no door, as three hallways extended from two other walls and the one they had entered from. Near the center of the room was what appeared to be a fire pit, four large benches dragged from somewhere else in the base to create sitting space around it. A large painting of the Galra emblem was burned with what appeared to be blaster marks, and Shiro felt the same uneasiness he had felt in the hangar.

If Pidge had been right (and she rarely wasn’t) then Lance really had been in a firefight. For the battle to have gotten this far was concerning, but what was most intriguing about it was how there was no debris here. The only stains on the ominously purple walls was the ones that marred the Galra emblem.

Just what had Lance been up to?

“You said ‘paladin,’ didn’t you?” Pidge’s question brought Shiro back into the present.

“Yes,” the blob responded. “There was a boy here many cycles ago, though it feels as if the shining sky has been here for a lifetime. He claimed to be a paladin of Voltron, and that he would help us.” The blob looked around at the walls, disgust evident in his gaze. “Clearly, he did not.”

“Why do you say he didn’t help you?” Shiro asked.

The blob nodded their head towards the fire pit. “Sit,” they commanded. “We have much to discuss. And very long stories to tell.”

The purple and yellow ones began to walk towards the fire. Shiro followed them, the rest of the paladins hesitating briefly before following Shrio’s lead.

After they had all been situated, the blob began to speak.

“My name is Borp,” they said. Shiro jabbed his elbow into Pidge’s side when she started to snicker. “I come from a planet far away from here. It had a name once, but has since been destroyed. This,” they nodded at the purple one, “is Kyrztak. He hails from an ancient Bulmera. He was relocated here many cycles ago, after the Galra had completely drained his planet.”

Shiro heard a sharp intake of breath. He looked over to see Hunk, his mouth opening to begin to say something, but he was cut off.

“The paladin told us about how you saved a Bulmera before,” Kyrztak practically growled. “I do not see how that is possible. Vitzkug is the third planet I have seen die in my lifetime. There is nothing that can stop the Galra from destroying a planet.”

“But we have,” Hunk protested. “We saved a Bulmera using Voltron. Princess Allura of Altea, she helped heal it.”

“Altea has been dead for centuries,” Kyrztak deadpanned.

“Yes, but the Castle of Lions wasn’t on Altea when it was destroyed,” Hunk paused and looked toward the floor. “I think.”

“Don’t waste your time trying to sell me your lies,” Kyrztak glared. “The other paladin had me fooled, but I will not fall for such trickery again.”

“Do not be so harsh, Kyrztak,” the yellow one’s voice was soft. It turned towards the paladins, clearly struggling to appear happy. “I am Gloxtov. This planet you have landed on is called Vitzkug, and it is my homeworld. I am the last Vitzkugian left on the planet, as the rest of my kind have been sent throughout the galaxies to serve the Galra Empire.”

“Why should I not be harsh?” Kyrztak demanded, his jumping up causing Borp to jiggle slightly. “Your planet is dead! There is no hope for us here! The paladin simply raised a field of ice and trapped us here, instead of keeping his promise!”

“Promise?” Keith spoke for the first time since they’d followed the creatures. “What promise?”

“He promised to take us away from here!” Kyrztak exclaimed as if it was obvious. “He said that he would rescue other prisoners, and then he would take us with him back to the rest of Voltron! But he lied! We helped him get inside, and he left us! He took those he really wanted and left!”

“Kyrztak,” Borp reprimanded softly. Kyrztak stopped, seeing the wet smile on Gloxtov’s face. “Enough.”

“I do not think he abandoned us,” Gloxtov said weakly. “I do not think he would have just left us to die.”

“I’m not so sure he wouldn’t,” Keith muttered.

Shiro decided they had gotten too far off topic.

“You’re saying that you know our friend was here?” he asked, trying to step around the clearly bruised souls of Kyrztak and Gloxtov. “Do you know where he went?”

“The last we saw,” Borp’s voice was tired, “he jumped into his lion and took off to the sky, claiming that he would come back. Not too long after, the whole sky froze over, and we were left on this planet with no way to escape.”

“Could you explain everything?” Shiro tried. “Could you start from the first thing you know and explain everything?”

“Perhaps,” Borp’s voice was cold. “But only if you promise that you will not leave us here.”

“I promise,” Shiro swore. “As a paladin of Voltron, I swear that we will not abandon you here.”

“What good is the promise of a paladin?” Kyrztak demanded.

“Do you not see, Kyrztak?” Borp asked. “If the other paladins are here, then clearly he never went back to the castle.”

Kyrztak turned sharply towards the paladins. “Is this true?”

“Yes,” Shiro allowed. “We haven’t seen him since we got separated about three months ago.”

“He was supposed to meet up with me,” Keith said bitterly, “but he never came.”

“Actually,” Hunk spoke up, his hand raised slightly, “we came to this planet because we tracked his lion. Currently, it’s sitting up in the sky. When the storm clears, we’re going to see if we can find him.”

“He’s still on planet?” Kyrztak spun again. Shiro didn’t realize his eyes could get that large.

“Well, actually he’s just above the planet,” Hunk corrected. “But yeah, he’s still here. He never left.”

“Why would he remain there?” Gloxtov asked, ears perking slightly.

“We don’t know,” Pidge said.

“That’s why we want to hear your side of the story,” Shiro said. “We want to know what kind of shape he’s in.” _Plus the storm’s keeping us here and knowing_ something _is better than waiting blindly,_ he thought silently.

“I do not know if I can tell you that,” Borp said, “but I can surely give you all the information we know.”

“But before we do,” Gloxtov interjected, his ears drawn back again, “there is a custom on Vitzkug. I wish it to remain intact until the sand breathes no longer.”

“And what’s that?” Shiro asked.

“Before telling a story,” Gloxtov smiled, “all who are listening and telling must know the names of all the others gathered.”

Shiro nodded. “We already know your names, so I’ll tell you ours. I’m Shiro, and this is Pidge, Keith and Hunk.” He gestured to each one in turn. “We’re all from the planet Earth, which is very far away from here. The other humans don’t even know that the Galra exist.”

“That sounds like a paradise,” Kyrztak grumbled.

“It does indeed,” Borp affirmed. He turned to Gloxtov. “Is that the only requirement?”

“Yes,” Gloxtov’s smile was brighter now. “You may proceed.”

“Then I will explain everything I know about the paladin who came before you,” Borp said, an almost smile displayed discreetly across his lips.

“I’ll tell you what I know about Lance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I want to say that in the car I planned out Lance's part of the story so it's not all over the place, so the continuity of everything should be much more flowing from here on out. 
> 
> I also wanted to point out that this is a personal landmark! I've never posted more that three chapters of a fanfic (I mean, I think i might have written at least four on one of them but never posted it. And in my Haikyuu fic, I thought I had posted the 3rd chapter but apparently I didn't? I don't even know where I saved that.), and this here is chapter four! And I'm still going!
> 
> This fic was supposed to be short (and what do you know, it was just like EVERYTHING ELSE I TRY TO MAKE SHORT), but this is surprisingly easy to write, even if I haven't seen the show in a bit. Before I write chapter 5 I'm going to try to rewatch at least part of the series in order to re-cement my grip on the characters, so the next chapter might be a little long coming, not to mention that unlike the first 3 chapters I'm in school now and can't be writing three chapters a day (seriously what possessed me to do that?). 
> 
> Anyway, there will be a chapter 5 coming soon, so stay tuned! (And as always, I love y'alls' comments!)
> 
> Edit: Yay! So my roommate Megan (who isn't a fan of Voltron specifically out of spite but who I coerced into being my beta anyway) just helped me do a drive-by edit! So many thanks to her!


	5. Stories in the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this one is going to be pretty dialog-heavy, which is to be expected when someone's telling a story within the story. Either way, be ready for a lot of talking. 
> 
> Here's chapter 5! Another personal best!

“When we first saw him,” Borp began, “he was climbing out of the mouth of a giant blue lion and threw his helmet to the ground. His suit was dirty, and he had bandages wrapped around his head.”

“Was he hurt?” Hunk’s voice was strained.

“I believe that it was just to stop some sort of bleeding,” Borp rectified. “It was probably just the remains of bandages left from treating a wound that had since mostly healed. He never made mention of any other injuries.”

Hunk relaxed slightly, but Pidge still saw tension in his shoulders and felt his body trembling slightly. Man, that guy didn’t like  _ anyone  _ getting hurt. The way he had freaked out when he saw Pidge’s wounds—no matter how minor or how much Pidge protested that she was okay—he would start panicking and rushing to fix something that had already mostly mended.

“Needless to say, his appearance was startling to us,” Borp continued the story, pulling Pidge back to the present. “He did not see us. We had only recently escaped the Galra using the tunnels below this base, so we were still very wary of any creature that came near. He happened to land near our camp.”

“Wait,” Shiro perked up. “You guys escaped from the Galra?”

“It was only attainable because they built this base over the old capital building,” Gloxtov smiled weakly. “They used part of the old structure they destroyed to build the new, and they were unaware that the Vitzkugians were fans of secret tunnels and rooms.” He turned to look at his companions. “The Vitzkugians used to tunnel for our food,” his eyes took a dreamy sort of glaze to them. “As such, we always made tunnels to make us feel more comfortable, and would make them hidden to keep visitors to the planet from finding them.” He looked down. “I suppose that came in handy, one last time…”

“Vitzkug’s core is made of crystals similar to that of a Bulmera,” Kyrztak explained. “No one is quite sure why, since this planet is not alive in the way a Bulmera is, but sometimes the crystals work their way up to make pockets of plant life under the sand.”

“They were always pretty,” Gloxtov said happily. “I wish the Galra hadn’t destroyed them.”

“Needless to say,” Borp smiled faintly at Gloxtov, “we were wary of all those who we did not know.

“We watched him for three cycles. Each one, he would leave his metal lion and sneak towards the Galra base. At some point, we figured out that he was not Galra or a Galra spy, but we did think him mad to constantly be sneaking into the heart of danger.

“One day, he came back, and we could see that he was in distress. He was making strange noises and talking about how horrible this was and how he didn’t know what to do. He kept talking to someone in his head named ‘Blue’ and kept asking her for advice and acting like he got it. That was when Gloxtov became brave.”

“I had believed he was suffering from hallucinations driven by hunger,” Gloxtov admitted sheepishly. “We had never seen him eat, but we had seen him drinking some strange purple liquid he later told us was water from another world. My people have always been those who help people stranded in the desert, and he seemed like someone who needed help.”

“The Alteans have a similar custom,” Shiro smiled. Gloxtov returned it gratefully.

“We approached him after he had finished his mad ramblings,” Borp continued. “He didn’t seem wary of us, and he had apparently learned that this planet was a slave camp and that three prisoners had gone missing. He was right in his assumption that we were the very same.

“He told us that he was hungry, and explained that he had been on the run from the empire for many cycles, and that he was trying to rejoin with his team. From all the damage to both himself and his ship, we assumed this to be true. We fed him and helped replenish his dwindling supplies, which we came to learn was the whole reason he was on this planet in the first place.

“While we were feeding him, we explained our own plight. You see, we may have escaped the Galra, but we have no ship to escape the planet, and it is growing harder and harder to survive. Lance promised us that he would take all of us with him back to his team, but that first he had to save some other prisoners.

“Apparently, during his many expeditions into the Galra base, he had discovered that they were only cycles away from completely cultivating the planet. They were set to leave, and to take all the slaves who had been working in the mines with them.”

Pidge started. “Wait,” she interjected, “there are Galra ships frozen in the sky. Do you mean to say that there were lots of slaves on board?”

“I believe so,” Borp admitted. “Though I did not know that the ships had been frozen in the ice. I had believed that the ice had frozen behind them.”

“Well, it didn’t,” Keith huffed. “Meaning that Lance may have killed a whole bunch of innocent people.”

“Now hold on,” Shiro spoke up. “We don’t know what the ice has done to  _ any  _ living creatures that were on board. They could still be alive, but just in stasis.”

“Lance’s ice isn’t exactly known for stasis,” Hunk raised his hand slightly. “I mean, I’ve seen it in battle plenty of times. I don’t think that the living being inside would be able to come back from being frozen even if we hadn’t smashed them.”

“But that ice may be different from the ice his lion used now,” Pidge put in. “Maybe the lion is capable of inducing stasis on its own. That’s not exactly a skill that would have been useful in battle. Plus, we don’t even know if his ice completely froze all the way through the ships.”

“Yeah,” Hunk nodded, “but then wouldn’t they starve?”

“Enough,” Shiro cut the conversation short. “It won’t do us any good to make conjectures on information we don’t have.” He nodded to Borp. “Please, continue your story.”

“As I was saying,” Borp continued, “he realized that he had very little time to save those other people. So, using our knowledge of the base we helped him devise a plan with only one rule: He would be going in alone.”

“Why would he have to be alone?” Hunk asked, his eyes showing a softer light than Pidge expected.

“The three of us,” Borp jiggled in what Pidge assumed was a gesture to the other two, “we had only recently been freed from the wretched place. We were too scared and would be of little use in helping his cause. So we devised a plan that would allow him to get what he needed by his own means.

“We decided that the lion would remain at the camp. He warned us that it was highly sought-after by the Galra, and that even if he did take it into battle, that it would attract too many ships to his location and prevent our escape, and it might also cause harm to the many slaves that lived here. He wanted to watch out for as many lives as he could.”

“That’s very…thoughtful of him…,” Pidge couldn’t exactly identify why there was a hesitation in Keith’s voice.

“He said that he made the choice based on experiences in the past,” Borp explained gently. “But he did not explain the circumstances to us.”

Everyone’s eyebrows jumped at that, and Pidge felt the surprise in her chest. Just what had Lance been doing those months before he came here?

“We taught him the tunnels,” Borp seemed determined to finish his story. “We described how to get from the tunnels to the prison cells. We explained how many sentries there typically were. We explained how the guards would unlock the doors. We told him everything we had learned in order to escape. And from that information, we created a plan.

“We decided that he would sneak into the hangar, before opening fire and attracting everyone’s attention. This would, hopefully, draw the majority of the guards towards the hangar and away from the cells where the prisoners were held. He would then use a small tunnel that was hidden in the far corner of the hangar that connected to a hallway near the cellblocks. We had used this tunnel ourselves, so we knew they did not know of it. At least, we strongly hoped.”

“I saw that!” Pidge exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “I saw Lance run into the hangar and start the fight!”

“ _ That’s _ what you saw?” Hunk’s voice had become pitched up.

“Well,” Pidge amended, “I still don’t know how, but I saw him begin your plan.” She looked at Borp. “I saw Lance attack the Galra in the hangar.”

Borp glanced at Kyrztak, but a huge smile lit Gloxtov’s face.

“You were able to see the past?” he practically whispered, his body nearly buzzing.

“Yes?” Pidge sat back down again, hesitant. “Kinda?”

“Oh joyous news!” Gloxtov lunged and grabbed her hands, holding them between them. “All is not lost then, young Pidge! If you could see the past, then Vitzkug still lives! Her soul still sings, even after the Galra have ripped out her very heart!”

“I…,” Pidge blinked. “What?”

“Vitzkug,” Gloxtov’s eyes practically glowed, “she is not alive like the mighty Bulmera that was once Kyrztak’s home, but she is still sentient. The shifting of the sand, the rumbles of the ground, and the tunnels where she provides for us are all part of the magic of her soul!”

“I don’t—“

“Legend has it that there was once a sorcerer who wanted to live forever, and that she loved her planet so much and wished so hard to protect it, that she infused her soul with it. The original story was much grander, and my brother could tell it much better…,” Gloxtov trailed off, his voice becoming sad, before he perked up again. “But Vitzkug gained many powers from joining her soul with the very planet. She has been able to grant many gifts such as the tunnels of feasting, the winds that hide us from most dangers, and—the most glorious of them all—she grants us the ability to see the pasts of those we love!”

Pidge hesitated, letting that sink in. “So wait, this is a common occurrence?”

“It…used to be,” Gloxtov released her hands and sat back. “There has not been someone that close and loving of another person on planet that her gift has been able to reach them.”

“Does that mean that Pidge cares more about Lance than us?” Hunk asked. “Because—and I don’t want to be rude here, just speaking the truth—I personally feel like Pidge would not have been the first person I would expect to ‘love Lance enough.’” Hunk eyed her suspiciously. “Unless there was some crush I didn’t know—”

“Ugh, no!” Pidge reeled back, pinching her face and sticking out her tongue.

“Vitzkug choses what each person sees, as she can only show each person one thing once,” Gloxtov directed his attention to Hunk. “What Pidge sees, and what you see, may be very different. She cannot show you things that happen in a different place than where you are, however. Maybe the reason you did not see something before Pidge was because you were not in the place of the event she wanted you to see.”

“That’s great,” Keith interjected, twitching. “Now can we get back to the explanation as to what happened to our friend?”

“Ah,” Gloxtov looked a little saddened, but smiled politely, moving back to sit where he had been. “Yes, sorry.” Pidge made a mental note to ask Gloxtov about all this magic mumbo-jumbo later.

“After he had gotten into the tunnel,” Borp continued, and Pidge had to say that she had never seen a glob of Jell-O seem so miffed, “He was to follow it and take the hallway it lead to in order to reach the cells. There, he was supposed to free the people he intended to, and leave out of a different set of tunnels that we believed still existed. We were not completely sure, however, as we had not seen them ourselves.

“That tunnel would then lead him towards the opposite end of the base, and he would work his way back to the camp and take us all to the destination he was searching for.”

Borp’s face darkened. “But something went wrong.”

“Wrong?” Hunk straightened. “How wrong?”

“I do not know,” Borp shook his head. “But when the paladin returned, he was in a rush, and he had no one with him. The ships had already started taking off, and he said something about the slaves no longer being in their blocks but on the ships. Apparently, we had overestimated the time before the Galra would leave the planet. Lance jumped into his lion, and promised that he would grab those he needed to, before coming back to get us. He said something about not wanting more people than necessary in a firefight.

“We watched him ascend into the sky, and not too long after, the sky exploded, and ice trapped us here to die. We waited for days, expecting him to return to us and tell us that he had erected a barrier to protect us from the Galra, but he never did. We moved into this base in the attempt to shelter ourselves better, hoping that staying close to the only building still standing would help him find us. Eventually, we resigned ourselves to our fate.”

There was a sort of silence that followed the ending of the story. Pidge had expected the aliens to know more about what had happened, but in the end they had really only been able to lay the foundations. They hadn’t been in the base when Lance was, and they hadn’t been in the air with him either. The only thing that really struck Pidge as intriguing—about the story Borp told, not about the mechanics of the planet because, truth be told it was  _ fascinating _ —was that Lance had apparently tried to rescue slaves before.

_ Had he tried to rescue my family? _ She wondered.

“So,” Shiro finally said, breaking the tension, “You really don’t know what exactly happened during the main part of the battle?”

“No,” Borp’s eyes were soft. “Unfortunately, the scars of being a prisoner of the Galra run too deep to be brave.” He eyed Shiro. “At least, most of the time.”

“So Lance has been frozen for months?” Hunk’s voiced had reached a higher pitch. “I had seen his dot stop, but I thought it was because he had rejoined Keith and Allura.” He turned to the aliens. “But if what you’re saying is true, he wasn’t on planet more than a  _ week _ before he was frozen in the sky.” Pidge could feel the perspiration starting to line the boy’s body. “That means, even if Lance had been alive, there was no way—“

“Hey,” Shiro’s voice was quiet, a soothing tone drenching any other emotions Pidge could have read and made them indecipherable. “We don’t know exactly what happened. Here, or in the air. He could be fine. I’m sure he’s fine.”

“But we don’t know,” Hunk practically whimpered.

Pidge’s heart seized, Hunk’s worry activating her own.

“I know,” Shiro placed a hand on the boy’s knee. “But we have to trust that he’s fine, okay? We have to believe that he’s alive.”

Hunk sniffed. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

In that moment, Pidge wanted nothing more than for the storm to stop, and for her to finally find her friend. The Green Paladin was driven by curiosity, and sometimes she just wanted to know everything. No matter how many times she would try to convince herself that everything was fine, she never seemed to be able to. Her mind would always think of the many different ways that things could have gone wrong.

She tried. She tried really hard to imagine that Lance was safe, tucked within his lion, simply sleeping away like he had in the healing pod those many months ago. She tried to convince herself that the odds of the Blue Paladin being more hearty in the cold was very high, and that he would survive. She tried to reason that the likelihood of Lance surviving that big of a feat against so many enemies was closer to one than zero.

She knew it wasn’t. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so all the interjections and divergences from the topic are kinda modeled after what conversations with me are like, so I'm not quite sure how you have a conversation that doesn't go all over the place. If all the interjections were annoying, then you're in luck, because there probably won't be another chapter this dialogue heavy (at least for a while. The final ones might just a little).
> 
> So I made up science for angst, but who hasn't, am I right? Anyway, I hope you all liked this chapter, and that you leave kudos (if you can. I personally get very upset that I can't leave more than one kudos because they NEED TO KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE THEM WHY CAN'T-) or comments, which are greatly appreciated. Chapter 6 coming soon once I figure out what I'm doing lol. Stay tuned!


	6. The Legend of the Champion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you all probably noticed, I updated the number of chapters in this fic. That's because I actually went into a phase and started planning the different chapters and what they'd involve story wise. Again, they may change, like for this one, that was supposed to be one chapter, but my roommate said (and I quote) "this is too much suffering for one chapter." (Also, thanks to my roommate for proofing this fic.) The second part is coming soon. 
> 
> That being said, enjoy the story, and I'll see you in the end notes!

After Borp’s story, the team had decided that it was close enough to nighttime to warrant finding sleeping situations. There had been a sort of silence after Hunk stopped sniffing that had only been broken by Keith’s yawn. Gloxtov had found some blankets from somewhere else in the base, and Team Voltron, and their new allies, had huddled up by the fire. 

Most everyone had fallen asleep, but Shiro couldn’t keep his eyes closed. Over the past three months, he’d discovered that the more of his friends that he found, the more time he spent asleep. He had hoped that with all his friends returned, that he would be back to sleeping the probably-unhealthy amount that he normally did, but it was better than the constant worry. 

But it looked like his theory didn’t hold up. 

He kept thinking about how banged up Pidge had been when Shiro had finally found her. Her wounds had been mostly skin deep, sure, but the sight of her beat up like that hurt much deeper. All Shiro could think of was how he had failed to protect Matt and Dr. Holt, and how they would have been heartbroken to have learned that their little Katie had been thrown into a war millions of lightyears away from home. 

But she wasn’t really little anymore, was she?

Shiro compared the stories he’d heard during the flight to the Pidge he knew now. She seemed tougher and more stubborn—though the Katie Matt and Dr. Holt had talked about had been pretty hard-headed, too—but maybe that’s what happened when you snuck into the Garrison under a fake identity to find the family members the whole world assured you was dead.

It had always astounded Shrio, really, that Pidge was so sure all three of them were okay. Well, “okay” wasn’t quite the word, but the fact that she didn’t believe that they were dead always struck Shiro as amazing. From what the others had told him, the Garrison had blamed their disappearance on pilot error—they blamed Shiro. 

The fact that Pidge had never once faltered in her belief that they were okay meant that not only had she believe they hadn’t crashed, but she believed that  _ Shiro  _ hadn’t made an error that had killed them. Shiro wasn’t sure if that meant that she was just desperately hoping her family was okay, or if she trusted him as a pilot that much. 

Either way, it made Shiro really happy to know she’d believed in him like that. That she  _ still _ believes in him like that. He’d never really told her how he felt. Maybe he should.

But of course, thoughts like that always brought him back to the Galra prison ship, and all the horrors that he remembered happening there. 

Part of him wished that he could remember the rest, and the other wished he wouldn’t. But during these past months, he’d come very close to reliving them more than once. 

He and Pidge had been a little too easy to find, he assumed, which was strange considering Green was the lion with the cloaking ability and Black was the same color as the space around them. They had almost gotten caught by a fleet of ships, but luckily they had been close enough to finding Hunk that he had intervened and allowed them to escape. 

But with only three lions, it had been much harder than before to take on the Galra. And from what Borp was saying, Lance had done it alone. Multiple times, if the reason he was cautious about prisoners lives was anything like what Shiro imagined it to be.

Shiro just kept thinking about Lance, and how he’d been alone when he faced them. Keith had apparently met up with Allura and Coran shortly after the disconnect. That meant that Hunk and Lance had been alone the longest. However, Lance had been frozen not long after Keith had joined the Castle of Lions, and Shiro wasn’t sure how to count that. 

Shiro couldn’t stop thinking about the possibility that Lance could have been awake, his lion disabled and incapable of allowing him to escape, that whole time. He couldn’t stop thinking about how if Lance’s long distance locator that connected to Hunk and Allura had been impeded, he might have been calling for help. He couldn’t stop thinking about how if Lance  _ had _ been awake that he would have starved to death, and about how if Lance hadn’t been in stasis being conscious wouldn’t have helped in a prison of ice. 

And, more than anything, Shiro couldn't stop thinking that maybe the lion had erected the ice barrier because her paladin had been killed. 

Shiro knew that Lance was the one closest to his lion, or at least had been before the split. He knew that Allura had said it was to protect her paladin, but he also knew that Blue seemed like the most loving of the lions. She probably  _ would _ lash out to attack the person who hurt Lance. 

Eventually, Shiro realised he wasn’t going to sleep tonight. 

He sat up, easing his way out of the material so as not to disturb the others. Pidge had flung her arm over Shiro’s chest, something he had grown accustomed to when they and Hunk would camp alone on a planet. He only minded the contact from the smaller body when he tried to get up early and not wake her. 

Apparently he had gotten better and it, because Pidge didn’t stir at all. 

He picked his way towards the fire, and took a seat on one of the benches, massaging his temples. He just wanted this night to end.

“Unable to sleep?” Borp’s impressively low voice caused Shiro to jump. He turned to see the blob of sentient Jell-O sitting on the bench beside him, staring into the fire, unaffected. 

“Oh,” Shiro said when his heart rate slowed, “I didn’t see you there.”

“Do not be sorry,” Borp replied. “It appears as if you are more focused inward than outward anyway.”

Shiro knit his brow. “Yeah,” he turned towards the fire. “I guess you’re right.”

“Do you worry about the status of your friend?” Borp inquired, not taking his eyes off the flame. 

“Yeah,” Shiro sighed. He leaned back, running his hand through his hair. He hated that he couldn’t feel the sensation of it through the metal. “I want to know that he’s okay. The waiting is killing me.”

“I regret that I cannot give you any helpful information,” Borp said. “I would assure you that he was alive and well, but it is not in my culture to instill false hope. And with my planet the way it is, my culture is all I have.”

“What exactly happened to your planet?”  Shiro looked at the seemingly emotionless face of Borp.

“It committed the heinous crime of being located in the same system as Altea,” Borp deadpanned, looking into the fire. There was a pause, and then he continued. “Altea may have been destroyed in almost one blow, but all nearby planets had slower fates. The Galra didn’t just attack from the atmosphere, but invaded our worlds and captured those they deemed fit enough to be useful to the Empire. The rest they just left on the planet before destroying it.” Borp looked up from the flames, his eyes towards the wall but his sight towards the past. “I was on one of the last ships to leave. I watched my homeworld burn.”

Shiro didn’t say anything. He couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to see Earth destroyed. Then he paused.

“Wait,” Shiro said, trying to be as respectful as possible, “you saw your planet destroyed?”

Borp nodded slightly, eyes now on the fire again. 

“Wasn’t it destroyed 10,000 years ago?” 

Borp laughed. Or at least, Shiro hoped the bubbling sound and violent giggling was laughing. 

“My homeworld survived about a thousand years longer than Altea,” he chuckled. 

“That would make you at least 9,000 years old, wouldn’t it?” Shiro asked. 

Borp nodded. “My kind do not age. We live until we either split ourselves to create children, or we are killed,” Borp paused. “None of us would have created another of our kind to live in this hellish world. I believe that I am the last.”

“What do you mean, ‘the last?’”

Finally, Borp turned and looked at Shiro. “My kind are all part of one being. I forget the stories, but I remember that all of us were born when the first of our kind split himself into seventeen parts. Because of that, we are all connected, and can feel the current states of the others. When another dies, we all get their memories. I cannot feel any of them anymore, but I do now have their memories of you.”

Shiro started at that. Memories of him?

Borp chuckled, seeing his expression. “When my brethren died, I would see their whole live in my head, even as I was forced to work the day away. Sometimes this can take a very long time, but there were a great number who had memories of you, the Great Champion, in their last few years. I remember some of them even died in your arms. You always cried for them.”

Shiro turned away from Borp, facing the fire again, and hung his head. “Did I kill them?”

“Some, yes,” Borp responded. “But most of them wanted to die anyway. And others were just too hurt from their captors. However, even the ones who weren’t with you when you died said you were kind to them and I have very many fond memories of you helping everyone you can.” 

Shiro looked at Borp again, his eyes wide. How many had he known? What had they been like? He wished he could remember.

“I knew you were a true legend when I heard talk of you around even this base,” Borp continued. “Everyone saw you as a hero, and everyone wanted you to be okay. There were even a few prisoners who said they knew you that used to be in this camp. When we heard that you had escaped, we were all happy.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Shiro almost whispered. 

“Because I know you can’t remember much from your time with the Galra,” Borp said flatly. “Lance told me as much. I’m sure what you do remember is mostly negative, so I want to tell you that you did good, too. You gave the other slaves hope. And it wasn’t false.”

Shiro blinked, his eyes growing misty.

“Thank you.”

Borp smiled. “Now, if you do not mind, my people may not age, but we do require at least an hour of sleep a night. I’m going to bed.”

Shiro nodded, silently curious as to how Borp could move on his own. As it turned out, it was exactly as one would expect—he slid off the bench and oozed his way toward Kyrztak like a snail, a small trail of wetness marking his path. Shiro watched Borp get settled and the trail fade, his heart happy in spite of everything.

Did he really mean that much to people?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, guys! As I said, it was a longer chapter than I had expected, so it took longer than expected to write. So chapter 6.5 is actually written, but it's very emotional and I have a tendency to make dialogue very flat which would make it feel stale and flat and I will not tolerate that for my children. That being said I know this chapter might also have been a little flat sometimes.
> 
> Ok so this is something that I always do and I try not to but oh well. I've come up with another fic idea. I'm not going to write it until I finish this one, I promise, but I just wanna see how many of you are interested in a pseudo Boku no Hero Academia Voltron au. Like, I already came up with the story and want to know how many of you guys would like me to write it instead of ranting about it to DragonDown at one in the morning. Just leave a comment below and I'll start making a cohesive storyline and I'll write it when I finish this one (because if I start writing it before this one ends this one won't and I feel really motivated for this.)
> 
> Alrighty Chapter 7 soming soon! Stay tuned!


	7. Wind and Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh guys I'm so sorry! I guess when I was adding the placeholder for this chapter I accidentally posted it instead of saving it for later! When I went through and planned out the whole story I made place-marker chapters with titles and a little description for what happens. Luckily this wasn't one of those, huh?
> 
> Again I'm super sorry for this! I would have changed it earlier but I had loads of homework and didn't check AO3 until now!
> 
> So, to make it up to you guys, I'm posting chapter 7 earlier than I had initially planned! Enjoy!

“Where are they?” 

A pained voice startled Shiro from his restless sleep. He hadn’t realised he’d dozed off, but the kink in his neck definitely proved it. He sat up, rolling his neck, before a body rushed by him.

That’s when Shiro realised he wasn’t on the bench.

He was sitting in the same place, sure, but the bench, fire, and all his companions had disappeared, and the Galra emblem was now unmarred. Shiro looked around frantically for a cause. 

“Where are they?!” Shiro’s eyes instantly latched onto the voice that spoke from only a few feet away. 

It was Lance.

His helmet was cracked, same with his suit, and dirt shaded the white surface. Bruises lined his face, and a small trail of blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. 

But he was here. He was alive.

“Lance!” Shiro called, jumping to his feet. 

Lance didn’t stop turning around, his eyes searching for something. That’s the the drowsiness cleared from Shiro's mind and he remembered what Gloxtov had said.

_ She grants us the ability to see the pasts of those we love! _

Shiro paused. Is this what Pidge saw? No wonder she acted the way she did. This felt totally real.

“No,” Lance stopped looking around, a hint of desperation in his voice Shiro had never heard from him before. “No, they can’t be gone already!” The worry and fear in his voice mixing with anger. Lance took his bayard and shot the Galra emblem across from them both, growling as he did so.

Lance groaned in frustration, not seeming to care that his blast might attract attention. He placed his hands on his head, his activated bayard still at the ready, and slid down the wall. 

“I can’t screw this up, too,” Lance whispered. 

There was a pause, and Shiro wanted nothing more than to go back in time and gather Lance in his arms to hold him. He wanted nothing but to tell Lance that they were on their way, that soon everyone else would be here to help him.

But they weren’t. 

At the point in time Lance was in, everyone was expecting Lance to find Keith. No one was going to try to find Lance for a few months at least. Lance was the only paladin no one was going to look for. Not for a long time.

No one was coming to help him, and he knew that. 

Suddenly, there was a sound from the end of the corridor. Lance bolted upright, his feet planted firmly and his bayard pointed in the direction of the sound. A shadow appeared on the wall, and the body of a sentry appeared. 

Lance took one shot, the leg flying off, and Lance was running. Shiro ran to keep up, watching as Lance tackled the already-falling robot. 

“Where are they?!” Lance yelled at the guard, shaking him violently. “Where are the prisoners?!”

“Access denied,” the metallic voice replied. “No comment.”

Lance growled, growing in volume. “Override 52H Passcode L4W.” The robot beeped before its lights turned green, and Shiro found himself again wondering what exactly Lance had been doing for that month before he reached Vitzkug.

“Where are the prisoners?” Lance hissed.

“They have been loaded,” the sentry responded. “The base of Vitzkug has been fully cultivated. All prisoners have been loaded onto transport ships and will be taken them to predesignated locations.”

“What?” Lance sat back. He paused, cocking his ear as if listening. “What?!” He cried. “They’re taking off?!” 

Lance jumped up, shooting the sentry in the middle of the chest before darting off. He sprinted back into the room Shiro had been sleeping in and darting out again. 

Shiro ran after him, trying to learn as much as he could about Lance. He was faster than he expected, and there were so many hallways that Shiro lost count. The world started changing color, and soon the distant back of the blue paladin disappeared completely.

The world was lit in shadows again. Shiro huffed, twisting to try to find a landmark he recognized. He had no idea where he was, but he assumed the dream was over. The memory Vitzkug had granted him was finished, and he wouldn’t see Lance again until they found him in real life. 

If they found him at all.

“Shiro!”

Keith’s voice pulled Shiro out of his darker thoughts, the panting breaths of Keith proving Shiro’s theory that he had followed him the whole way.

“Keith,” Shiro panted back, glad at least someone had followed him. Maybe Keith knew the way back. Maybe he wouldn’t be stuck alone in a Galra base—something he’d been trying desperately to avoid.

“Did you see Lance?” Keith asked immediately upon stopping.

“Yeah,” Shiro looked down the hallway where he had seen the ghost of Lance disappear. 

“Was he hurt?” Keith questioned. Shiro's eyes widened at the intensity. “Was he being pursued?”

“No I...I think he was fine,” Shiro thought back. “He was trying to find the slaves, but couldn’t. I guess Borp told us as much. There wasn’t really any new information.”

“Then why did you see it?” Keith’s question caught Shiro off guard.

“What?”

Keith rolled his eyes slightly, as if it was obvious. “Gloxtov said that Vitzkug only shows you things that it thinks you need to know. If Borp had already given you all the information you just saw, then why did the planet show that scene to you?” He paused. “It must have been important somehow.”

“I guess you’re right,” Shiro glanced at Keith, who now was staring at the wall, his eyebrows screwed up in concentration.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you this visibly worried about someone in a long time,” Shiro said. Keith jumped, spinning to look at Shiro.

“What?” Keith’s face looked like a gasping fish and Shiro stifled his urge to laugh. “What does that mean?”

“I mean,” Shiro smiled, “I haven’t seen you so invested on locating someone for a very long time. I think it was years before I even went to Kerberos, actually.”

Keith blushed, turning so his back was against the wall and leaning against it. He was suddenly very interested in the floor. “We need him to form Voltron.”

The forced apathy in his voice made all credibility flimsy.

“That’s not the only reason though, is it?” 

Keith looked away, staring down the hallway in silence. Shiro waited patiently.

Keith had always been slow in admitting to his feelings—if he even acknowledged them himself. Shiro had learned long ago that waiting was the best way to get him to talk.

“It’s just,” Keith started after a few minutes, refocusing his gaze on the floor, “He was supposed to come find me, right? But he didn’t. Allura and Coran came, and we fixed the lion—which took a couple of weeks, by the way—and he still didn’t come. I got really mad, because I knew that he knew that my lion was damaged, and that he was supposed to help me. And he never came.” The air seemed to deflate out of Keith.

“But it looks like my anger was misplaced,” he said solemnly.

“You knew we were in a war,” Shiro tried to make his tone soft and non-threatening. “You knew that something might have happened to him. Why did you choose anger instead of worry?”

“I...I don’t know…,” Keith slumped even more. “Being angry is easy.”

“Is it?”

“Yes!” Keith jumped off the wall, looking Shiro in the eyes. “It’s so much easier than worrying about it he’s okay, or if he’s hurt, or if he’s been captured by the Galra. He’s not a horrible pilot, but he crashes more than the rest of us! He could have wrecked Blue! It’s so much easier to be angry at him than to constantly worry about if he’s alive or not. Especially since he hates me already.” Towards the end, Keith had leaned against the wall again, his vigor slowly dying.

“He doesn’t hate you, though,” Hunk’s voice from the end of the hall startled them both, even with how soft it was. Keith’s face turned the color of his lion as Hunk stepped into the light and came closer.

“Pretty sure he does,” Keith huffed, turning his face away to hide the redness. 

“Nah,” Hunk gave a soft smile. “That’s just him. He was probably trying his best to get to you.” Keith’s ears changed shades at the revelation that Hunk had heard  _ all of it _ while Hunk’s smile shifted to a frown.

“That means that him still being on planet is bad news,” Hunk said. His words sat in the hallway for a bit before Hunk’s darker impression lightened.

“So why are you two wandering aimlessly in the hallway?” 

“Shiro saw Lance,” Keith muttered, still not making eye contact.

“Aw, man!” Hunk turned to Shiro, his eyes full of anxiety.

“Why does everyone get to see Lance but me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, super sorry for posting that. For those of you wondering about the note, that was something that my roommate said while we were trying to come up with a title for this chapter. I thought it was a good, memeable quote to sum up this chapter, so here it is:
> 
> "Emotion too hot. Hot hot emotions. Emotions so hot your fry an egg. On this god forsaken ice planet."
> 
> Next chapter is coming soon. I wrote it last night but I gotta do tons of editing to it should be out soon. It's gonna be a doozy, so get excited. 
> 
> Once again, I'm super sorry for the fake chapter, it was not intentional. See you next chapter!


	8. The Past in Flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I just want y'all to know that it physically hurt to write this one? Like, the emotions of it were a little crazy. Anyway, Here's chapter 8. I hope you like it!

While the paladins slept below, Allura and Coran found themselves incapable of such activities. They rushed about the Castle, scanning the planet ceaselessly to try to have information for the morning. Allura stood at the main console on the viewing deck, her bottom lip between her teeth, and she looked over the most recent data.

Contrary to popular belief, Allura worried a lot. 

She worried about the Castle’s outdated hardware and the various creaks she heard at night. She worried about how the leader of the paladins had been previously captured by the Galra, and she worried that his mental state might be more unstable than he showed. She worried about how many distress beacons the Castle had picked up, and how many year the Galra Empire had over her and her friends. She worried about how new and inexperienced the new paladins were, and how the past paladins had all flown for years together before fighting Zarkon—something even they had failed to succeed at. She worried about how often she had come close to death in only the first few months after waking up. 

Normally she could brush the worries aside, hiding them in the pocket of her dress only to bring it out late at night when she was alone in her room with just the mice to hear her. 

But right now, she had no trouble suppressing her typical worries. She had something even worse to worry about, the pressure of it almost suffocating her.

If Lance was alive and in his lion when he froze the planet over, he would have had no trouble getting out. 

If everything was as they hoped, he would have found Keith and they never would have ventured to this distant planet. That meant he should have had no reason for staying—none that were good, anyway.

She considered the fact that the ice was still here. The Blue Lion must still be functioning, otherwise there was no way that the ice field would continue to be so hard to penetrate. The three suns would surely have melted it, especially seeing how the Red Lion had cut through it at a decent pace. The Blue Lion must have recognized her sister and let her in. For a field of this magnitude, it would have to be in almost perfect shape. 

That meant that the reason it hadn’t left had something to do with Lance.

First, she considered that maybe he was knocked out at the time. It would satisfy the “no other way” requirement, but he would have woken up at some point, wouldn’t he? At that point he could have just used the Blue Lion’s magic to get out. 

Then she considered the possibility that maybe he was hiding from something. It  _ was _ very possible, especially since Lance was the one who ended up closest to the heart of the Galra empire, but wouldn’t it have made more sense for him to hide on the planet? There were only a few lifeforms below, and there had been hardly any structures besides the empty galra base. Wouldn’t the sand be a better place to hide than a very obvious shield of ice? 

Try as she might, the only things that made sense were the bad ones: Lance was severely hurt, Lance was captured, Lance was—

She cut herself off there, shaking her head as she stood at the control panel. Lance couldn’t be dead. He was chosen by the Blue Lion. He may not be the best pilot in the universe, but he was still very effective in battle. He was a necessary part of the team, and without him some of the humor would disappear from their lives.

If Lance was gone, they would have to find a replacement. And that was incredibly hard to do. Not only would the person have to be a pilot, but they would have to have a quintessence that mirrored the Blue Lion, a personality that fit in well with the team, and they would have to be able to mentally sync with the other four paladins. They couldn’t go back to Earth, so the likelihood of a creature of another galaxy being able to mentally fuse with four other beings from the same planetary culture was almost impossible. 

And, logistics aside, Allura did not want to replace Lance. 

Lance was important not only to the team, but to _ her _ . All of the paladins had become Alura and Coran’s new family, and the thought of even one of them disappearing broke her heart. She didn’t want to lose her world all over again.

“Princess?” Coran’s soft voice snapped Allura out of her trance. She turned to see his kind eyes. “Are you alright?”

“I…,” Allura paused, before starting again, this time with more conviction. “I’m fine, Coran. Thank you.” That’s right. She can’t worry now. There’s work to do.

“Well,” Coran seemed hesitant to continue, “if you’re sure, there’s a new reading.”

“Oh?” Allura perked up. She and Coran had been scanning everything they could to try to figure out as much as possible. Unfortunately, the sandstorm that blocked the communication between her and the paladins also blocked their scanners, so the planet was mostly hidden from the readings. However, they had recently started working on scanning through the ice, and they had learned that the more the scans resembled Allura’s frequency, the more they discovered. They were making real headway. Maybe the Blue Lion was letting them in. 

“It appears as if the ice isn’t completely solid,” Coran said, looking down at the screen he had pulled up in front of him, diagrams of all colors and shapes blurring together when viewed from Allura’s angle. “There seem to be a few large caverns in the ice with small tunnels connecting them. They contain nothing but air, and have a few pillars of ice growing inside.” Coran pulled the screen so they could both see it. 

There were about five caves dispersed throughout the ice shield, all of them free of any type of ship. Small tunnels wound between the five, making a complete circle around the planet. They avoided all ships, and from a structural standpoint they looked like just a way to make the ice lighter to prevent the pull of gravity from cracking the shell.

Allura’s heart sank. She had hoped that maybe the lion had made them to keep itself from freezing completely. But it looked like even with these holes in the ice, they were so deep beneath the outer surface that the shield was still  _ very _ stable. 

The barrier had clearly been built with longevity in mind.

“Can you scan to see if there are any living forms in the caves?” Allura asked, fearing what they would find.

“I will get right on that,” Coran nodded, heading back to the console he had been standing at. They both knew that the likelihood of the scan resulting in anything was low, but they had to try. It was horrible to just wait, floating above the planet where the paladins were stuck, listening to the silent walls that used to be so full of life.

Allura turned back to her own console, trying to see what she could do. She scanned the holoscreen, searching for any data that would be useful.

She must have been looking pretty hard, because everything started changing color. 

The normally white-heavy room gained a blue tint, and the screen she was looking at dissolved into nothing. Allura looked around, finding herself in a different ship than the one she had just been in. Worry filled her heart before recognition sparked in her mind.

She was in the Blue Lion. 

“I know provisions are running low,” a mildly-annoyed voice spoke from the pilot’s chair. Allura swirled to face it, seeing the outline of brown hair poking over the top of the chair, and a leg hanging over the armrest. “Can we just pick a planet to land on?”

Allura ran over to the body, her heart soaring when he saw Lance. He had significantly more bruises than she would have liked, but he was here.

Except he wasn’t. 

Something in Allura whispered that this was just an illusion—a memory playing out before her. Even though she knew it was fake, she still desperately wanted it to be real. 

She wanted  _ Lance _ to be real.

“There are only a few planets we could get to before rations completely run out, Blue,” Lance said, his head sliding off the headrest and his body adjusting to lay sideways in the chair. He looked up at the ceiling, his eyes focused on nothing. “Which planets have life?”

There was a pause, and Allura felt the smallest brush of something at the back of her mind. Lance’s eyebrows shot upward. 

“Only one?” he asked, disbelief heavy on his tongue. “These planets all have the right conditions to have a ton of life.” Lance paused, his face darkening. “Have the Galra mined them all?”

There was a dinging noise, and a panel appeared near Lance’s head. He looked at it, Allura studying it alongside him. It showed some details about the life below, and its concentration. Lance’s eyebrows grew even closer.

“That looks like a mining camp,” he said. The certainty at which he said it lead Allura to believe that he knew this from experience. He spun the tiny globe a few times, trying to find something. He paused near the only Galra base, intently focused. Then he closed the panel. 

Lance sighed and sat upright again, picking up his helmet from beside the chair. He took the controls in his hands, visibly bracing himself. 

“Here we go again, Buddy,” Lance said, before turning the Blue Lion into a sharp dive. 

Allura grew unsteady on her feet, the sudden movement catching her off guard. She placed her hand on the back of the pilot’s chair, latching on to keep from falling. Lance plowed through the atmosphere, the lion shaking just a bit too much for her liking.

Before long, the fire rimming the lion dimmed, and Lance pulled the ship into a flat position, turning the ship’s body so it was parallel to the ground below. He dropped the lion onto all fours, resting for only a few seconds before darting off through the sand. 

It was Allura’s first view of the planet from the surface and all she saw was endless sand, then, up ahead, she saw an outcrop of rock. As Lance neared the rock, Allura could see a crack near the bottom. It looked much too small to fit a lion, but Lance seemed to be heading straight for it. Allura gripped the back of the pilot’s chair.

They had almost reached it when Lance pulled the lion upward, flying almost parallel to the rock formation. Once he mounted it, they immediately dove into a much larger hole that faced the sky.

The fit was tight, but they made it in, falling to the bottom and immediately running into one of the side tunnels. The tunnels became much smaller, and eventually Lance could go no further. 

He had the lion hunch over, edging into a smaller tunnel just off the larger one he had been following. The lion had to get increasingly cramped, and finally it could get no smaller. He turned the ship around to face the tunnel and had her crawl on her belly for just a few more steps, before adjusting into a parking position. 

Allura could feel the Blue Lion’s discomfort, but Lance just sat at the controls, his eyes focused on the tunnel before him. Allura heard the sound of Galra ships flying through the tunnels, but none of them came into the one Lance was hunkered down in. 

Eventually, the sound of the other ships faded, and Lance let out a long sigh. 

“I told you I’d get better at this,” Lance smiled. Allura felt the lion purr in response. Lance smiled harder, before standing up. 

Suddenly, the hair stood up at the back of her neck. Lance paused, cocking his head as if listening.

“Blue?” Lance said, only mild concern lighting his features. “Is that you talking?”

Allura heard a low rumble, and Lance’s confusion grew. “Well if it’s not you, then I don’t know  _ what’s _ in my head.”

Allura felt something shift, the whole ground seeming to buck under her, but she knew that the Blue Lion hadn’t moved. Lance shook, too, leaning heavily against the pilot’s chair, his face not too far from hers. His eyebrows furrowed, then his eyes began to glow.

It was slight, but Allura felt some energy from the planet moving through him and his lion, turning his eyes a luminescent orange. 

It faded quickly, the energy leaving Allura’s bones sparking with electricity. 

Lance’s eyes stopped glowing, and, after a few ticks, he straightened again, shaking his head.

He stretched, then turned towards the exit, Allura following him. He stood by the ramp before it opened, and the light was much brighter than Allura expected. She had to cover her eyes. 

She she opened them, she was back on the ship, a very concerned Coran holding her shoulders. 

“Princess?” Coran’s voice was full of worry. “Are you alright?”

Allura’s heart twinged at that. He had to have been remembering the last time she had had a vision. 

“I’m fine, Coran, I promise,” Allura smiled. She took a step back, taking his hand for a second before releasing her grip. Coran hesitated for a tick, worry still lining his face, before letting go as well. 

“What did you see?” Coran asked, hesitant.

“I saw Lance,” Allura said, her brow furrowing. “I saw him piloting the Blue Lion, and landing on the planet below.” She paused, thinking. “It was just a memory. I wonder why?”

Coran sighed, the tension in his shoulders loosening slightly. “That would be the planet,” he said, straightening. 

Allura gave him a look of confusion and he continued on.

“I looked at the records Altea has on the planet below,” He said. “It appears to be the planet Vitzkug, and it was known for having some very unusual traits.”

“Unusual?”

“It’s quite intriguing, actually,” Coran puffed out, pulling up a screen in front of him and typing away while he talked. “The planet acts like a Bulmera, but nothing in its physical composition is alive. The planet itself  _ does _ have it’s own quintessence, however, and it can sometimes communicate with the inhabitants who live there. It can show the memories of other people, or even allow life to grow where it otherwise never would have.” He glanced at her, briefly. “There are no cases of it this far up in the atmosphere, though.”

“Why not?” Allura perked up. 

“Well,” Coran looked at his diagram, “it appears as if most of the hallucinations come from a chemical in the air that the planet’s quintessence reacts with. How you were able to feel the quintessence without that chemical is most odd…,” Coran glanced at her again. “It’s just like on the Bulmera.”

Allura thought on that. “I wonder if the other paladins have had any visions, too?”

“It’s possible,” Coran said, turning back to the diagram. “When the Alteans were here over 10,000 years ago it apparently happened very frequently.”

Allura was about to respond when a beep sounded from her control panel. Allura walked swiftly over to it, placing her hands so that the new information would be displayed.

A notification popped up, and delight filled her heart.

“Coran!” Allura cried. “The Castle has made contact with the Blue Lion!”

Coran practically ran to stand beside her, his eyes alight with joy. 

“It says that it’s at full functionality,” Allura read aloud, knowing Coran was reading right alongside her. “All systems all clear, and any damage it had received when fighting Zarkon or the Galra is fully repaired. Rations are full, and life support is working fine.”

Allura’s heart was giddy. She felt like she was finally getting somewhere. Lance had plenty of food. Life support was good. Everything was fully functioning. He was okay.

“The shield is raised, protecting it from freezing itself,” Allura continued, joy forming a lump high in her throat. She wanted to cry from happiness. “The transmitters are working fine and have been transmitting a location beacon to the Yellow Lion consistently. It looks like the ice was blocking it, but all systems are functional.”

Allura scanned the next few lines, searching for the information she wanted. The ice still prevented them from finding the lion’s exact location, but they had an idea of about where it was. She scrolled down farther, looking for the lifesign readout.

“It says there are…,” Allura looked closer, transcribing the readings, “two lifeforms on board?” Allura paused. Had Lance picked someone up? “Both of them are dormant. They appear to be a little damaged, but they can survive. It looks like the Blue Lion activated some sort of stasis within the cockpit.” 

Allura’s heart sored. It was okay. Lance was okay.

“Scanning the lifeforms now,” Coran pulled up a different screen, typing furiously. He smiled at Allura. “We need to know what condition Lance and his friend are in so I can prepare a pod.”

Allura nodded, then turned back to the readouts. She read a little bit more before Coran gave a little “ah-ha!” and she looked at his screen, interested in seeing how Lance was doing. 

“Alright,” Coran clicked on a few things on screen, and began reading them to Allura. “So it looks like his passenger is someone we don’t know, which we expected, since almost all lifeforms we know in this time are accounted for. They appear to be dehydrated and malnourished, as well as running on a lack of sleep—something that their ice nap hopefully helped. Maybe he rescued them from the ships?”

“It’s possible,” Allura thought. “What about Lance? How’s he?”

“Let’s see…,” Coran tapped a few more things before a screen popped up with vitals. Allura wished she had learned about human anatomy over these past few months so she could know in what state her friend was. “He appears to be—” 

Coran stopped, his face draining of color. His hand paused, hovering over the screen, frozen.

“What?” Allura glanced at the screen, unable to identify the cause of his concern. “Is he badly hurt? Is he okay.”

“N-no…,” Coran tapped a few things, sliding them around stiffly, his shoulders tense and breathing shallow. “The vitals...they’re fine. They’re similar to the other one, and I think they could both be healed rather quickly in the pods.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Allura searched Coran’s face, hating how the older man bit his lip. 

“The other lifesign…,” Coran swallowed hard, letting his hand fall to his side. “It...it’s not Lance.”

Allura felt like she had been slapped. “What?” She asked, her voice feeling too loud and too quiet at the same time. The lump at the top of her throat dropped into the back, sorrow turning the happiness in her heart hard and painful. “What do you mean it’s not Lance? It has to be Lance!” She was desperate, searching Coran’s eyes.

Coran just closed the screen, turning to her slowly, his eyes misty when they met hers.

“I mean neither of these vitals are his,” Coran almost whispered, his lip trembling. “There are no other organisms on board.”

“That…,” Allura took a step back, heart heavy. “That means…”

Coran nodded, turning to look out the window towards the ice-covered planet.

“Lance is missing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so how that that taste of happiness? Originally, I had envisioned them just getting sad from the getgo but my mind was like "no wait we can make this hurt more" and this happened. Whoops. Anyway, The next chapter has already been started, so it shouldn't be too long. I hope you like the developments and everything.
> 
> (Sorry if I seem a little lifeless writing these notes. I'm back in my hometown that I hate and I've been studying for a stats test all day, so all creativity is drained from me right now.)
> 
> Anyway, stay tuned! It's just getting started!


	9. The Empty Ship

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! So idk what exactly happened to motivate me like this, but I've actually written all the way to chapter 11 now. Why didn't I post? Well, because, heh heh, I didn't want to edit. I don't know why but I have no desire to edit anything right now? I mean, this one is edited, and I'm working on chapter 10 right now, but that's the cause for the really long delay. Sorry for the wait!
> 
> Anyway, here's chapter 9, freshly edited and ready for your viewing pleasure!

The human body had always been a wonder to Keith. After all, wasn’t it just  _ amazing _ how even though he hadn’t slept for more than an hour he  _ still _ got a kink in his neck? No matter how much he rubbed his tired muscles, the soreness wouldn’t go away.

He tried to ignore his traitorous neck as Shiro recounted his dream to the group. They assumed that it was the next morning, though the sand outside, the ice in the sky, and the three suns made calculating time difficult. 

“So you had a vision that Lance couldn’t find the prisoners?” Pidge asked after Shiro had finished, her eyebrows drawn together. “Why would Vitzkug show you that? Borp told us everything you learned and then some.”

“That’s what Keith said,” Shiro replied, the weariness drawn in the lines on his face, “but I don’t know what else it could be.”

“Maybe it had something to do with the code he rattled off?” Hunk tried. “I mean, literally how did he get ahold of that?”

“Maybe…” Shiro thought for a second, rubbing his eyes, “but that didn’t seem to be the main focus. It felt like that was just something he did. The main point was on how he couldn’t find the prisoners.”

“But that makes no sense,” Pidge furrowed her brow. “Why would the planet waste its one-time shot to show you something that you didn’t need?”

“Maybe it’s not something obvious?” Keith spoke up. “Maybe it was something small that he did.”

“Yeah, so, like I said.” Hunk put his hands out in front of him, the palms parallel to each other. “The code.”

“Shiro said it wasn’t the code,” Keith said, eye twitching. “And it wasn’t the prisoners, either. So what else was in the vision that could be important?”

“Well if we’re going to psychoanalyze Shiro’s vision, why don’t we look at mine, too?” Pidge said. “I’m sure mine had a meaning as well.”

“I thought your was the planet saying ‘Look at what I can do! Also your friend was here,’” Hunk said, pitching the planet’s voice to be super high.

“I’m sure there was more to it than that,” Pidge said, indignantly. 

“Sometimes,” a soft voice spoke from the corner, “Vitzkug shows you things that you need to see for emotional reasons, not just as a means to an end.” Gloxtov moved closer, having returned from where he had disappeared when Keith and Shiro came back.

“So it might not have meant anything?” Keith said, feeling the headache starting already.

“Yes,” Gloxtov smiled nervously. “Sometimes she shows you a vision of a loved one to soothe your soul.”

Shiro furrowed his brow. “That’s not what it felt like, though,” he said, cocking his head slightly. “It felt like there was a purpose. Like there was something I was supposed to pay attention to.”

Gloxtov paused, thinking. “I do not know how I could help,” he said after a bit. “My people have become very good at understanding Vitzkug, but I do not know what in your story would be of note.” He smiled sadly. “I do not understand you beings from Earth enough to be of much assistance.”

Shiro smiled back. “It’s okay, Gloxtov,” he said. “We appreciate the insight you’ve given us so far. It’s been really helpful.”

Gloxtov’s long ears raised slightly, the smile on his face becoming more genuine.

Suddenly, a noise from their helmets caught their attention. Everyone slid their helmets back on, a transmission from Allura booming in Keith’s ears.

“Paladins?” Allura said, her voice drained of energy. Keith wondered if she had gotten less sleep than him last night. “Paladins, are you there?”

“We’re here,” Shiro spoke back, his worry evident in his voice. 

“Oh…” Allura paused, her voice going timid for only a second before raising back up in strength. “Good.” 

Now she had Keith’s undivided attention. He had  _ never _ heard Allura sound so tired and worried, not even after her father died. Keith glanced at the other paladins faces and saw his own worries mirrored in their faces. What had happened?

“Is everything alright?” Shiro asked, the same thoughts clearly going through his mind. 

There was a pause, before Allura sighed tiredly. “To be honest, I was hoping the sandstorm wouldn’t clear.”

Keith’s eyebrows shot up at that.

“Why?” Shiro asked cautiously.

“I suppose some part of me wanted to not share with you this information,” Allura said. The paladins waited, and Keith could hear Hunk’s ragged breathing from where he sat across the room. 

Finally Allura sighed. 

“Lance is missing.”

There was a paused, bewilderment igniting in Keith’s mind.

“Yeah?” Keith said, furrowing his brow. “Wasn’t that why we came down to this planet in the first place?”

“No,” Allura seemed hesitant. “What I mean is that Lance is not where he was supposed to be. Last night Coran and I managed to get in contact with the Blue Lion. Lance was not aboard.”

The room stilled. Keith couldn’t hear a breath from anyone. Hunk froze completely, his face pale and arms stiff.

“What do you mean, ‘Lance isn’t on board?’” Shiro broke the silence, his voice shaky. “Lance  _ has _ to be in the Blue Lion.”

“He isn’t,” Allura continued, a finality to her voice Keith didn’t exactly like. “The Blue Lion is above you in orbit, yes, and we have located it to almost exact coordinates, but Lance is not there. We can recover the lion, but not Lance. We have no idea where he is.” 

The silence was almost deafening, now. 

“He’s…” Pidge started, her voice timid and completely unlike her normal self, “He’s not there?” A pause. “He’s not just right above us, completely safe and just waiting for us to rescue him?” She looked up, finding Keith’s eyes the most convenient to look into. “Where is he?”

Keith wanted to answer her question. He wanted nothing more than to be able to tell her right then and there that Lance was fine, that Lance was fine and  _ safe _ and  _ happy and right there for us to save, Pidge, he’s only a ten minute’s flight away he’s okay he’s fine he’s _ —

But Keith couldn’t. He’d always been envious of Pidge and Hunk and Coran for how much they knew about mechanics. He would always marvel at how they talked in a language almost as foreign to him as Altean. There had been many times Keith felt a little inferior because of it. Sure, he knew how to fly, but that was more instinctual and it didn’t feel like something he knew, just something he was good at. He’d often wished he knew as much as them. 

But he’d never wished to know something more in his life.

There was a sigh, and it pulled Keith out of his thoughts, while also proving his theory about Allura’s recent sleeping pattern. “There’s more.”

“More?” Keith’s voice was frustrated, and he felt the anger rising up in his chest. “What do you mean, ‘more?’ What else could there possibly be?”

There was a long pause, and Keith was afraid that he’d upset her. He knew he wasn’t the only one worried.

“Coran and I scanned the fleet,” she said, her words practically falling from her mouth like stones. “We identified all the ships and ran them by our records. It appears as if the whole fleet is stuck in the ice.”

“Except…?” Shiro said, wariness edging his voice. 

“Except,” Allura was hesitant, “the command ship.” Another pause. Keith was starting to hate the silence. “We can’t find it anywhere. It must have left before the ice formed.”

“So you’re saying…” Hunk’s voice was gravely and quiet, hardly a whisper.

“We believe that Lance has been captured by the Galra,” Allura said, her words a blow to Keith’s heart. 

Hunk looked about to pass out. Shiro looked like he was going to throw up. Pidge looked like she was going to cry. Keith wanted nothing to do but punch someone—maybe himself. 

Why had he been angry at Lance? Why had he been vengeful and cursing him when all this time he was probably imprisoned by the Galra? Keith had seen how deeply wounded Shiro had been, and Lance was not only younger but he’d been captured  _ alone _ , and was a high-profile prisoner since he was paladin of Voltron. 

Whatever Lance had been suffering was probably worse than Shiro’s experiences. He’d probably being interrogated, tortured in order to try to find out Voltron’s whereabouts. 

But he didn’t  _ know  _ where they were, and he didn’t have his lion to find out, so if they were trying to figure out where the other lions were Lance couldn’t tell them. He could be interrogated forever, or brainwashed or—

No wonder Lance had hated him. No wonder he pretended not to remember their bonding moment, or challenged him to races and constantly tried to one up him. 

How could Lance stand to be worse at something than the guy who hated him for becoming a prisoner?

“H...how did the ice form, then?” Pidge practically forced herself to say. Keith could see her shaking from here. She was losing a member of her family to the Galra again. 

Keith’s heart ached.

“He must have been taken in the command ship, his lion freezing the rest of the fleet out of vengeance,” Allura tried to explain. “It’s rare but not entirely unheard of, and Lance is  _ very _ close to his lion. It would also explain why the ice is so hard to get through, and why the lion was still maintaining it. It must have been trying to keep itself safe from the Galra.”

“He...he must have been their captive for months now,” Hunk’s voice was so soft only the automatic magnification of the helmets alerted Keith that he had spoken at all. “All this time…”

Keith had never seen Hunk look so small. The large boy was hunched over, his whole body shaking. His face was pale and his lips pinching into a thin line. His eyes were misty, but he didn’t shed a tear. 

There was an unspeakable sadness on Hunk’s face. Keith had seen lesser versions of it whenever Shiro mentioned his time with the Galra. 

Keith didn’t know for sure, he but figured that Lance and Hunk had been close friend for a long time, possibly even longer than they had been at the Garrison. If hearing Shiro, a man Hunk had only recently gotten to know, broke his heart, Keith couldn’t imagine how much it hurt him to know that not only was his childhood friend going through the same thing, but that he was still going through it. It must have been devastating.

Suddenly Hunk stood up, trying his hardest to make his face neutral, but no one was buying it. 

“I’m gonna go check on Yellow,” Hunk tried for monotone, but failed. “The hangar was open all night, I want to make sure that she’s okay.”

“A-alright,” Shiro said, worried.

Hunk turned on his heel and practically ran out of the room. 

That detested silence took the boy’s place, the harsh truth grating against Keith’s skin. He wanted nothing more than to leave. He’d always been uncomfortable with emotions, but these were so strong and so muddled Keith knew that the only thing That would make him feel better would be flying. But Hunk had already gone off to the hangar, and Keith understood how important alone time was. Hunk had been Lance's friend for much longer than Keith had even known them. Hunk needed this more than he did. 

"Um..." Gloxtov's voice snapped Keith into the present. "What has happened?"

Shiro gave a soft smile. They had all forgotten that they had alien friends in the room. “I’ll tell you in a moment, okay?” Shiro said softly. “Right now we’re talking to the princess.”

Gloxtov’s eyes widened. He nodded his head, taking a step back. Keith had a feeling Lance had mentioned Allura to him more than once.

Allura had gone silent, but upon Shiro’s comment to Gloxtov she spoke up again. “Whether Lance is in the ice or not, the plan doesn’t change,” she said, her voice becoming more powerful with each syllable. “We need to get the Blue Lion from out of the ice so that Lance has a lion to pilot when we get him back.”

“You’re right,” Shiro said, feeding off of Allura’s energy. “Once Hunk comes back, we all head up to retrieve Blue.” He turned to Keith. “We’re gonna need Red to melt the ice.” His brow furrowed. “Allura, do we know there Blue is?”

“Not exactly, no,” Allura replied, and Keith heard the clicking of keys in the background. “But we’ve discovered that the ice has lots of tunnels and caverns inside of it. The Blue Lion appears to be near a large cavern almost directly above your current coordinates. If you get into there, the Yellow Lion may be able to get a better reading. Hunk’s sensors would be more accurate than ours.”

“Alright,” Shiro looked thoughtful for a second. “So we’ll take Red up and get into the cavern. Yellow will follow and scan, and we’ll go from there.”

Keith nodded. He looked at Pidge, who was staring after Hunk.

“What if…” Pidge stopped, biting her lower lip. “What if we get to Blue, and find Lance dead inside?”

Keith’s eyes widened.

“We won’t,” Allura’s voice was pained, but certain. “There are only the two lifeforms and the rations in the cockpit. Nothing else is organic.”

Pidge didn’t move for a second. After a few moments, she pulled her helmet off and wiped the tears from her eyes before replacing it. Shiro moved closer to her.

“It’s okay,” he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll find him.” Pidge turned and wrapped her arms around Shiro, burying her face into him and shaking slightly.

“I don’t want to lose anyone else from my family,” she whispered.

“Coran and I will be doing a few more scans and calculations from here,” Allura said, her voice wet. “Let us know when you are planning to depart and we will meet you at the coordinates.”

“Alright, Allura.” Shiro’s voice was thick. “Over and out.” He slid his helmet off, placing it on the ground beside him. He pulled Pidge back a little, taking hers off, too. Once her helmet was off, she dove even harder into his chest. Shiro adjusted so that she was practically on his lap, and placed one hand on her head, the other tracing lazy circles in her back. 

Keith felt sick. He looked over and saw Gloxtov, whose smiling face had morphed into pure worry. 

“Did something happen?” he asked, taking in the faces and placement of the paladins. “Is Lance okay?”

Shiro sighed, the weariness in his eyes only partially from the lack of sleep. Keith felt the emotion reflected in his heart. 

“No,” Shiro finally replied. Keith ground his teeth.

“I don’t think he is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So thanks to Megan for being my beta again. [round of applause and cheering. someone falls out of the balcony but they're okay. flowers are thrown on stage.]
> 
> So, while I was looking over all the comments on the last chapter (I couldn't respond because I don't trust myself not to give out spoilers, but I still read them all and was really happy about all of them!) I noticed that there was actually a HUGE plot hole later in the story, and luckily I found a solution that will also be very effective emotionally (mwah ha ha), so get excited for that. 
> 
> Also, I'm really excited for the next few chapters. I'm gonna try to keep with my promise to keep everyone in focus and give all the characters lots of love and attention, even the ones that (in my opinion) rarely do, and these next few chapters hopefully will highlight it. Once I get my butt in gear and edit everything I'm writing, they'll hopefully be coming out like hotcakes, so get hype!
> 
> Stay tuned, and I'll see you next chapter!


	10. Mined Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will say, I'm super excited to see what you guys have to say after this chapter. This is where I fix my plot hole, so I wanna see what you guys think of it. (Also for reasons I can't explain yet because of spoilers!)
> 
> Oh and hey! I was thinking of maybe making this fic a series? Maybe writing a few ficlets about the other paladins' time alone in the spacerness (like wilderness, but in space). Let me know what you guys think! (of course it'd be after I finish this one)
> 
> That being said, here's chapter 10!

Hunk felt sick. 

He had practically run to the hangar. He was lucky that his feet somehow knew the way because he certainly wasn’t thinking straight. 

As soon as he had rounded the corner of the room he had started crying. It wasn’t one of the ugly cries, but the quiet ones, the ones where you just can’t stop.

Lance was gone. 

Lance, Hunk’s firm foundation, the one that he knew arguably the best, the one who shared the weight of supporting the team, who Hunk would lean against when he was scared and who would lean against him when he felt worthless, was gone. Hunk knew Lance the best, and now he was gone. The one certainty in this new world he had been thrown into was gone. 

And he was probably being tortured right now. 

The thought tore at his heart, the burning claws of empathy driven in deeper by the anxiety. Everyone knew how bad Shiro had it. Everyone knew how little sleep he got, how messed up he was after escaping, how his nightmares would wake him screaming, how sometimes they would bleed into real life, too. Hunk and Pidge had gotten front-row seats to his nightmares over the past month or so. There aren’t any walls to hide behind when you’re camping. 

Hunk couldn’t imagine Lance that way. 

Lance couldn’t be hurt that deeply. Lance couldn’t be crying from pain, couldn’t be hurt, or alone, couldn’t be permanently scarred. Hunk might have only recently been assigned the Yellow Paladin, to be the great protector of Voltron, but he had always wanted to protect those he loved and cared about. And Lance was one of the oldest and closest. If Lance was hurt like that, then he had failed. 

If Lance was hurt like that, no matter how much Hunk knew it wasn’t his fault, he would still blame himself. 

What if he had asked that Shiro’s quest ended at Pidge, and that Hunk had found Lance then gone to Keith? What if he had gotten Allura faster from the Galra? What if he had moved quicker when saving Shiro instead of looking for that magic lady? Would they have made it in time to not have the wormhole shattered? What if he had convinced Shiro and Allura to not go on board that command ship? What if he had kept Keith from going after that weird cloak guy so they could have gotten to Shiro and Allura faster? What if he had convinced Lance not to go through the wormhole those many months ago? What if he hadn’t made that geiger counter? What if he hadn’t looked through Pidge’s stuff? What if he had swayed Lance and Pidge from going in after Shiro, even if Keith had given them a perfect opportunity? What if he had convinced Lance that breaking curfew was a bad idea? What if—

Hunk slammed into the Yellow Lion, tears making his cheeks slippery. His hands came up and wrapped around the giant paw as much as they could, but her width was too wide.  

He sobbed, the worry and fear and “What If”s swirling like a storm inside of him. 

He wanted Lance. He wanted Lance so much he could barely breathe. He wanted Lance to be happy, and safe, and secure, and these past months he had been living under the assumption he was. That was why they had moved slowly and carefully. That was why it had taken so long. If he had known that Lance was in trouble, if he had known that Lance wasn’t okay, he would have moved faster. He was always too slow. He never moved quick enough, never thought about situations fast enough, he was never fast enough to do  _ anything _ —

_ Why would you have to be fast? _

The voice in his mind was gentle, but Hunk still started, jumping back and falling onto the ground unceremoniously. He looked up at Yellow, his eyes wide in wonder and surprise.

“What?”

_ What’s so wrong with being slow? _ the voice asked again, the feeling of Yellow washing over Hunk. It wasn’t quite smooth; it was rocky and hard but also fine, like sand flowing over him. It soothed him, the feeling somehow taking the edges off his worries.  _ I have never thought being slow was a bad thing. It just means I have more strength to fight when I arrive. Being fast is Red’s job. _

“You can talk?!” Hunk practically yelled, pure shock resonating through him. Since when could the lions talk?

The feeling of laughter rolled over him.  _ Of course we can talk. Have you not noticed that Blue and Blue Pilot both talk a lot? _

Hunk sat there, stunned, before thinking back. Shiro  _ had _ mentioned how Lance seemed to be hearing someone in his head telling him the ships were taking off, and Borp had told them Lance was talking to Blue before they approached them. Hunk hadn’t thought that Blue had actually been answering, though.

Yellow huffed, a snicker resonating in her energy.

_ We can only talk when we are very close to our pilots and our quintessence is almost perfectly mirrored, _ Yellow said, her voice calm.  _ It normally takes years of practice and patience, but you humans have been putting all others to shame, advancing faster than any pilots before. _ Hunk felt a smile.  _ But of you new pilots, you are the second to hear my words, not my thoughts, of these new pilots.  _

Hunk felt pride wash over him, and a few of his worries seemed to fade away. A smile lit his face, just briefly, before he furrowed his brow again. 

“Can the lions communicate?” Hunk asked, looking at her eyes. “Can you ask Blue what’s happened to Lance?”

_ No, _ Yellow’s words were sad, and if she could move her face she would have frowned.  _ Blue has been silent. For a long time she was far away, and we would not have been able to communicate anyway, but even as we got closer, none of us have been able to reach her. _

“Is it because of the ice?” 

_ No, _ Yellow was thoughtful.  _ We believe the ice to be merely a physical form of whatever she and Blue Pilot have done. _

“Was it bad?” Hunk felt terror seize his chest. “Can they recover?”

Yellow paused.  _ Blue can, yes. She has done this before, though never for this long. But without being able to communicate I cannot tell about Blue Pilot.  _

Hunk felt his heart sink. He looked down at the ground, tears threatening again. Yellow pressed reassurance through their connection.

_ I may be the lion of protection, _ Yellow said, trying for comfort,  _ but Blue is the lion of love. She would not have done anything to endanger her pilot.  _ Hunk looked back up at her.  _ Her ice is similar to my earth. We are both strong, and we are both stable. She would have protected Blue Pilot, I am sure. _

Hunk smiled. “Thanks.” He felt her smile back. He basked in the warmth of her, before he felt it prick against him. 

“Is something wrong?”

Yellow paused.  _ There is something wrong with this planet, _ Yellow said hesitantly.  _ The balance is wrong. _

“What do you mean by balance?” Hunk asked.

_ In all planets, a balance is necessary for it to be stable,  _ Yellow explained, showing Hunk image of planets spinning off into the endless abyss of space.  _ Each of us lions represent something that is necessary—earth, fire, air, water, and life. For a planet to have the higher ones the lower are necessary. However, this planet is missing something. _

“Like what?” 

_ I know not… _ Yellow’s eyes turned towards the land outside, and Hunk noticed that the storm had died and the planet was quiet. Without the storm or anything obscuring the horizon, he could see the ice wall from standing within the hanger.  _ This planet has an abundance of earth, but I cannot tell what is missing or what could be done it fix it.  _

Hunk blinked. “Can’t the other lions tell?”

_ No.  _ Yellow almost shook her head. _ The earth has grown larger, trying to compensate for whatever is missing, but the Galra distorted this world originally. My sisters cannot tell what is here and what isn’t. _

Hunk thought on that, his mind racing. Did that mean that if they got the ice out they would have to abandon the planet? If so, Gloxtov, Kyrztak, and Borp would have nowhere to go. Could they revive it somehow, like what Allura did to the Bulmera.

_ I do not this that that is possible, _ Yellow said hesitantly.  _ Reviving a planet is a huge undertaking. Healing the Bulmera had been hard enough, but this planet was originally lifeless. There had been help from the castle when the Bulmera was healed, but that would be impossible, now. Only the essence of the planet can heal it. I believe that the imbalance is what has caused the soul of this world to disappear. _

Hunk thought on that. What would they do with Kyrztak, Gloxtov, and Borp? Where would they go? It would break Gloxtov’s heart to leave Vitzkug but what other choice did they have?

As he was thinking, the light around him changed. The blue hue in the sky became yellow, and the Yellow Lion was replaced with an armada of Glara ships.

“Gah!” Hunk cried, falling backwards in surprise. It took him a few seconds to realize that this was probably a flashback and that there was no danger here. 

He stood, his heart pounding as a few sentries walked by. Even though he was safe, it still felt so real that he couldn’t completely suppress the anxiety.

“Lance?” Hunk called out, trying to find the other boy. Wasn’t he supposed to be here? Wasn’t that the point of these visions?

Hunk blinked. He surveyed the walls, finding no damage. This must have taken place before Lance infiltrated. 

If so, where was he?

Borp had said that he had scouted out before, so Hunk went to the door, trying to see if Lance was easy to spot. He watched the landscape, waiting for movement. Eventually he got it, a flash of white and blue from the corner of his eye. Hunk turned toward it, seeing the edges of Lance’s helmet disappearing into what looked like an underground maze. 

As he got closer, he realised that there were guards everywhere, whips or guns in hand watching—were those Galra slaves?

Hunk’s blood ran cold at the sight of them. Their clothes were dirty and tattered, the purple they used to be bleached in the heat of the three suns. Everywhere he looked he saw shaking hands and jutting ribs. It made Hunk want to vomit. 

These must have been the mines. He had expected them to be deeper and more underground, like the mines that he had found Yellow in, but they looked like they were more like trenches in structure.

“Ptsst.” 

Hunk glanced down and saw Lance crouched in one of the empty branches, his back against the wall and ducked down so that no guards could see him. Hunk jumped into the pit after him, his feet sinking into the sand when he landed.

“Ptsst,” Lance hissed again, eyes on the guards but flicking to the two nearest prisoners. “Hey Flinx, Jagis.”

The two prisoners glanced at the guards and discerned how far away they were before glancing at him, not letting up in their swings.

“Lance,” the bigger one hissed, blue fur rippling over smooth muscle. They must have been new to the prison camp, because, even though they showed signs of fatigue, they were in better health than majority of the slaves near them. “Why are you back already? It’s dangerous to come this quickly.”

“I had to,” Lance whispered back, keeping one eye on the guards. “I have a plan.”

“We had a plan, too,” the smaller one said, green fur puffing up slightly. They lashed their tail, the fin-like appendage catching the sand and sending it flying. “But that did not work out well for us last time.”

“It’s okay, Flinx,” Lance replied, cracking a small smile. “I mean, I found you guys again.”

“My brother is right,” the larger one said, their face lowering into a grimace. “Our last attempt to break into a Galra base did not go well. I would not suggest trying something again this quickly.” Their eyes softened. “We were happy to know that you were okay, and that you would come back for us with all of Voltron. It was enough.”

“Well,” Lance hissed, his face darkening, “here I am, coming back for you. I won’t get caught. This time I have inside sources.”

“And who is that?” Flinx asked, grinding his teeth.

“You,” Lance deadpanned, and Flinx and the alien Hunk assumed to be Jagis paused. 

“What?!” Flinx hissed, resuming so as not to attract attention. “You cannot be serious!”

“The last time we gave you a way inside everything went badly,” Jagis grimaced. “How could you trust our judgement again? All we really gave you was a code and a misguided plan.”

“Well, you’re the  _ current _ inside source, but not the only one” Lance admitted, watching the others’ expressions with worry. “I also met up with those three prisoners who recently escaped. 

Jagis and Flinx stopped at that, turning to stare. Lance’s eyes grew wide and he waved his arms, signalling them to start again as he watched a guard turn. They resumed, but their expressions didn’t change. 

“How did you find those prisoners?” Jagis asked. “I thought they would have been light-cycles from this planet by now.”

“Well see that’s the thing,” Lance admitted. “They don't have a ship. So we made a deal: I get my hero on and pull a rescue mission and rescue you guys and a few other prisoners,then I get us all out of dodge.”

“What is a ‘dodge?’” Jagis asked. 

“It’s an expression from Earth,” Lance gave a small smile. “I couldn’t tell you where it came from, but it means to leave quickly and with purpose.”

Flinx knit his brow. “When are you planning this rescue attempt?”

“Two days from now,” Lance replied. “I just need some info from you guys, then I’ll meet back up with the others and we’ll discuss the plan and put it into action.”

“What if they get recaptured?” Jagis asked, voice soft. “What if they freeze up like we did?”

“They’re not going in,” Lance said. They both looked at him. “I don’t want to put anyone else at risk. Not after last time.”

A shadow passed over everyone’s faces, and Jagis and Flinx nodded.

“What do you need to know?” Flinx asked.

“Well,” Lance started, “I know you guys can use that weird sonar thing, so I was wondering if you knew the basic layout of the base? Could you read the walls or try to find a specific person? Because that would be really…” 

Lance’s voice began to fade, and panic seized Hunk’s heart again. Lance couldn’t go. He wanted him to stay! Couldn’t this last longer?

The colors were starting to change again, the bodies of everyone nearby starting to go fuzzy. Hunk sort of saw Jagis nod before beginning to talk, but everything was so muddled he couldn’t hear anything.

Within seconds the vision was gone. 

Hunk was sitting in an empty trench, sand up to his knees from the storm. With no one to maintain it the constant wind had moved a lot of the sand back into the holes they had been removed from.

Hunk felt Yellow’s curiosity poking at him. He looked around, searching for an exit from the hole he found himself in. Eventually he located one and ran back to the hangar. 

He opened his mouth to relay to Yellow when Keith’s footsteps on the catwalk caught his attention.

“Hey,” Keith’s voice was soft. “You okay?”

“I’m…” Hunk paused. “I’m as okay as I will be until we find Lance. Why?”

“Shiro says it’s time to go,” Keith replied.

“Go? Go where?”

Keith looked out across the sand and to the sky.

“To get the Blue Lion back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so like idk what happened but this chapter feels gross to me? Like, I was super excited to write this one, but there was a whole chunk that I wrote and then was like "no, that makes it too obvious, the whole atmosphere of this is mystery" and I rewrote the middle chunk and it just feels wrong. But idk how to fix it so here it is. I might revamp it later when I get a hold of myself or what I'm doing here, but I don't want to hold out on giving y'all a chapter because idk how I would ever be able to fix it for me. I dunno. If I do rewrite it I'll put it in the notes before another chapter. So, don't hate me if this one wasn't as good because I tried my best and it did not work out at all how I hoped. I'm hoping it's just the whole "you've been staring at this for days and saw both versions literally you'll be the only one bothered by it" thing. As always your thoughts are greatly appreciated!
> 
> Anyway, sorry for the long note! Megan was my lovely beta once again even though she knows absolutely nothing, so many thanks to her. And thanks a whole lot to you guys! Like, I recently found out that in order to figure out the stats about your fic you have to click the stats button (I totally just blew your brains out I know. No need to thank me) and this fic has 95 subscriptions???? I have literally never had more than one before I love you all holy shit!!! And honestly sometimes I don't feel like writing and I see your comments and immediately am able to like write a whole nother chapter so thank you guys so much!!
> 
> Anyway, stay tuned for the next chapter, it's much less awkward than this one, and it should be out soon (barring any bears stampeding campus and bearing the apocalypse on their shoulders [hah hah double pun]).
> 
> See you guys next chapter, and have a totally-platonic-and-full-of-gratitude hug/kiss from me!


	11. Excavation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long! I finished writing this eons ago, but unfortunately this week I got sick, and then after I proofed it my roommate and beta got sick. Then we went home over the weekend, so this week was kinda a mess. However, we're both okay now, and this fic has been freshly edited by the one and only Megan! 
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy this chapter as it was made just for you! (Not you, YOU.)

To be honest, Coran kinda wished he hadn’t woken up at all. 

When he had gotten into the pod all those years ago, he had known that the possibility of waking up was very slim, but he had been okay with that. He had always been a servant, following orders and administering advice and thinking of other people, and he was happy, sure, he didn’t want fame or fortune or anything, but, just this one time, he wished he didn’t have to. 

War was tiring. He’d already lost so much. Couldn’t he just sleep? Couldn’t he just wait peacefully in his icey bed, tucked away in the heart of a castle made by long-dead hands, the war the put him there adding no weight to him? Couldn’t he just rest until the wounds no longer cut into him and the heartache had long since faded?

He knew he couldn’t. Allura may have been a rock for the rest of the paladins, but he was definitely still her advisor. He couldn’t leave Allura stranded in the middle of a war, and he knew that the longer they slept the more the sorrow would build for her. 

And, maybe, there was an upside. 

After all, if he hadn’t woken up now, he never would have met Shiro or Keith or Pidge or Hunk or Lance, and gotten to have all sorts of adventures with them. 

He never would have gotten to make many new wonders and work for hours alongside Pidge and Hunk, their antics causing time to fly by faster than was entirely necessary. He never would have gotten to watch Shiro and Keith train like monsters, each strike full of so much intent to kill that even though they were only at the level of Altean children, he feared for when they finally beat the top level. 

He never would have gotten to explain to Pidge the mechanics of the castle, her eyes lighting up and her constant curiosity causing him to talk until he was hoarse, though Coran never minded the scraping and would talk until other duties interrupted and pulled them apart. 

He never would have gotten to experience cooking with Hunk and how inventive the boy was with spices and herbs from the most random of planets, would never have gotten to see him laugh at the stupidest of jokes and poke innocent fun at the others. 

He never would have gotten to see how deeply Shiro cared for the younger paladins, how his grace and caring rivaled that of the Altean royalty, even though everyone know how deeply wounded he was inside. 

He never would have gotten to watch Keith practically walk ruts into the floor, his less-than-obvious worry driving him to overwork himself until Coran had practically—no, make that literally, there had been bruises—wrestled Keith into bed to make him rest. 

And he never would have gotten to talk to Lance that night on Eris before everything went sideways. 

That talk had been so good for his grief, and hearing about Lance’s planet somehow made everything hurt less. He’d found a kindred soul, and it was strange. Lance wasn’t a cook, or an engineer, or an Altean, or even an adult, but, somehow, Lance had been exactly what he’d needed. 

They’d talked for a long time, sometimes laughing, sometimes holding back tears, but after the words had dried up and the party downstairs beckoned them, there had been a peace in Coran’s soul that hadn’t been there before. It was as if something had smoothed out his hard edges and made it so they didn’t stab quite so badly. 

Coran didn’t forget how Lance had taken the brunt of the impact. He didn’t forget how watching the dust clear and seeing the boy burned and bruised had cut him more deeply than anything had since he woke up. He didn’t forget the worry he’d felt in his chest while he and Hunk had been on the Bulmera and how even though Coran had joked he knew they didn’t have much time. He didn’t forget how long a day had felt without Lance laughing or making jokes or picking fights with Keith.

And he especially didn’t forget that Lance had almost died trying to save him  _ twice _ .

When he had heard that Lance had run into the airlock because he thought Coran was trapped in there, it had almost made Coran weak in the knees. Why was Lance so selfless sometimes? 

And why, why was he missing? 

Why wasn’t he here, making loud jokes that broke the tension and doting on everyone’s health and calming Hunk down from anxiety attacks and warning Pidge that sleep was important and watching Shiro to make sure he wasn’t going too far off kilter and picking fights with Keith so the other boy wouldn’t work himself to death? Why wasn’t he putting Coran’s mind at ease with tiny reassurances while he checked the mental health of the other paladins because Coran tried to watch over them but he knew almost  _ nothing _ about humans and Lance knew so much? Why wasn’t he flirting with Allura? Why wasn’t he being annoying and obnoxious, listening to everyone’s stories and pulling others into his ideas or laughing at some stupid joke he’d pulled? Why wasn’t he offering to knit sweaters for random aliens or making horrific siren noises or terrible laser immitations with the other paladins? 

Why wasn’t he here with his family? 

Coran knew how important family was to him. He couldn’t stand to know that Lance’s family was taken from him again.

“Coran?” Allura’s voice snapped him back to the future, her blue eyes too worried and too tired for her age. Coran felt another pang in his heart. “Are you alright?”

“Ahem,” Coran looked away and coughed into his hand. “Yes, fine. No need to worry about me.” He looked up at where the Red Lion was cutting through the ice. His grip tightened on the controls of the pod and he ignored Allura’s worried gaze in favor of staring at the Yellow Lion. 

They only had the Yellow and Red lions with them for the moment, along with the pod Coran was currently piloting. This was mostly because the other lions weren’t entirely necessary and because someone would have to pilot Blue out of the ice. No one really wanted to think about the latter, though. 

Coran wanted Lance to be safe. Retrieving the Blue Lion was the first step in accomplishing that. Then they could worry. Then he could be afraid. Then he could cry and scream that none of this was fair while alone in his room. But now, he had to be alert. 

“I think I’m almost through,” Keith’s voice came over the headsets. “The ice seems to be thinning.”

There was a loud cracking and suddenly ice shards fell from the hole Keith had disappeared into a while ago. 

“You guys okay up there?” Shiro called.

“We’re fine,” Pidge replied. “Keith got into the tunnel.”

Coran watched as the Yellow Lion flew into the hole before quickly following. The tunnel Keith had cut was just barely large enough for Yellow, but they made it. Hunk came out and landed in the tunnel, facing the opposite direction of Red.

“Take it away, Hunk,” Shiro said. There was a pause, before Hunk started backing towards Keith. Keith dove out of the hole in order to let him pass before coming up and leading the rear. It was a tight fit, Yellow scraping against the narrow walls and eyes facing Coran the whole way. The tunnel suddenly started pitching upwards, proving Coran’s theory that the tunnels came much closer to the inner edge of the ice field than the caverns.

After a long enough time where even Coran’s patience with the noise was starting to wear thin, the walls suddenly opened up and they were in a giant cavern. Columns of ice rose throughout the room, some of them huge and some smaller. Hunk came to a stop near the middle, turning Yellow a few ways before stopping. 

“What’s up, Hunk?” Shiro asked.

“The Blue Lion is in one of these walls,” Hunk replied, his voice distracted. “Yellow can’t tell which one, but our best way to get to her is from here.”

“I thought you said that Yellow would be able to pinpoint her.” Keith was clearly irritated.

“I had hoped, yes,” Allura replied. Coran watched her brow wrinkle with worry. “The ice is magic, and made entirely from and by the Blue Lion, so it’s easy to understand that her signal might be a bit scrambled. It might even be intentional, since we believe she was evading the Galra.”

“I say we search on foot,” Shiro said. “There are a lot of spots where Yellow won’t fit.”

“I’ll sync Yellow’s reading to my handheld,” Hunk said, and Coran heard shuffling over the coms. 

The Yellow and Red lions both took a sitting position, and Coran parked the pod. He and Allura got out and walked over to where Shiro and Hunk were both looking at his handheld. Keith and Pidge came over from where the Red Lion sat. 

“So,” Keith said as he approached, “how are we supposed to tell where Blue is if the signal isn’t strong?”

“As we get closer, it should get clearer,” Coran said, inspecting the paladins. 

He hadn’t seen them since they went down to the planet yesterday. They all seemed worse for wear, even though their descriptions of the lifeforms they encountered were positive. They all looked tired and sick, the bags under Shiro’s eyes more pronounced than Coran had ever seen and Keith more twitchy than before Coran and Allura had decided that waiting for Lance was no longer a good plan. 

Pidge almost looked defeated, only the smallest glimmer in her eye showing that she hadn’t given up hope. Hunk looked tired and like he was going to throw up, the worry in his face reaching levels Coran had never seen before. 

Coran didn’t like seeing everyone hurting the same way he was. It was bad enough seeing Allura look that way, but the others were worse. They knew him better, or at least Pidge and Hunk did. There were too many mirrors and not enough smiles. A pang in Coran’s heart whispered that Lance would have been able to fix that by now.

“Let's try over by those columns,” Hunk suggested, his voice tired. “It looks like those are more collected. They may have been set up like that to keep ships farther away.”

The group shuffled towards them, Hunk scanning with his handheld. They entered, Coran running his fingers over the ice. The cold bit at his skin through the suit, water melting and wetting it. He surprised to see that beneath the outer layer of fog, the ice was pure and colorless, not a fault in the structure.

“The signal seems to be stronger over here,” Hunk called from a few columns over. 

Coran shook his hand as he wandered over, watching the ice that rose up before him.

It hit Coran, probably for the fifth time in less than a day, that all of this had been created by  _ Blue _ . Whatever she had been intending to protect was hidden by this wall from whoever she gaged to be her enemies. 

The raw power of the lions had always been amazing to Coran. 

“This ice feels...different,” Allura said quietly, her eyes on the huge blue structure. 

“What do you mean?” Shiro asked.

“The ice of the Blue Lion normally feels like a combination of the lion and the paladin’s quintessence.” Allura knit her brow. “All of the the attacks and abilities of the lions is like that, too. Fire from the Red Lion would feel like the her and Keith intertwined, and so on. But right now, it feels different. Off. Like there was a third party involved somehow.”

“Do you know what it is?” Pidge asked, pushed her glasses up. 

“No…” Allura glanced at them all. “But once we get into the lion it should be made clear.”

They lapsed into silence after that, each one searching and thinking. After a long time, Hunk was the one who broke it.

“Hey, so,” Hunk started, his words bouncing off the icy walls and eyes never straying from the scanner in his hands, “when I was in the hangar I had a vision.”

They all stopped. Hunk seemed to shrink slightly, his shoulder hunching over. 

“So, like,” Hunk continued when the silence didn’t let up, “I found the mines and stuff, and I saw Lance hunkering down in them talking to these two other aliens. Their names were Flinx and Jagis?” He paused again. “Anyway, he seemed to know them. They were talking about how Jagis and Flinx had apparently been working with Lance to infiltrate the Galra before?”

“When would he have tried to infiltrate with them?” Pidge asked. 

“I dunno.” Hunk shrugged. “It probably happened in that month before Lance landed here? They looked like they were kinda new. They weren’t as lean or tired as the others, but I could see that they were heading that way.”

“So why’d Vitzkug show you that?” Shiro asked.

“I think they might be the two lifeforms in the Blue Lion,” Hunk said sadly. “They were talking about Lance’s rescue plan, and Lance just needed some information from them in order to put the finishing touches on it.”

“Why was he so desperate to save them?” Pidge asked, her face darkening. She looked around. “All of this is because he didn’t just leave the planet.”

“I think he sees it as his fault that they got captured,” Hunk said cautiously. “They mentioned breaking in, and apparently they were the ones who gave him that code. He sounded really regretful that he had gotten away and they hadn’t.”

Coran saw a darkness pass over Shiro’s face before all traces of it had disappeared.

They continued in silence, everyone within their thoughts.

Coran thought about Shiro. Did he have survivor’s guilt? If so, Coran would have to work on that. Shiro was such a nervous wreck of emotions as it was, he sincerely hoped that this wasn’t heaped on top of it. 

What about the emotional states of the other paladins. Where they okay? Were any of them damaged more deeply and they just didn’t show it? Was Shiro’s even deeper than they thought?

Coran traced his hand over the pillar, looking at the pristine clearness on the inside, thinking. If only Lance was here. He was so much better at reading people.

Coran stopped. He turned back to look at the streak his hand had made. Wrapped in his thoughts, he’d almost missed it. 

This pillar wasn’t clear. 

He was faced with the tip of the boot of a Galra soldier. 

“Hey guys!” Coran called. “There’s a soldier in here!” 

The rest came over, watching as he slowly uncovered half of the man. Cold pricked at his palm as he stood back to look at the frozen Galra soldier.

The faceplate was completely intact, the part of the face that was visible twisted in an expression of surprise, the mouth open as if in mid-shout. 

“Wait,” Pidge said, clearing away more, “he’s holding onto something. Hunk, can you help me clear this?”

Coran could see them moving out of the corner of his eye, but his gaze was on the face of the soldier. Had they survived? Were there thousands of Galra soldiers frozen just like this through the rest of this ice? Were there prisoners? Shiro had mentioned that all these ship were prison ships. Were there thousands of dead bodies of slaves spread throughout these ice caves? Why would Blue have done this? What would she have gained from forming this barrier? What was worth the cost of destroying all these lives?

A sudden intake of breath from Pidge and Hunk drew Coran’s attention. 

He looked at them, seeing the pallor of their skin and the look of shock on their faces. 

“Are you okay?” Coran asked, placing a hand on Pidge’s shoulder. 

Pidge didn’t saying anything, tears forming in her eyes. She pointed towards the ice.

Coran turned to look at what they saw and stopped. 

It was like the breath had been squeezed out of his lungs, his heart stopping and tears pricking at his eyes. 

“What’s wrong?” Shiro came up, Keith and Allura hot on his heels. 

Coran simply pointed, mirroring Pidge. They all looked and froze.

Hunk hiccuped, tears falling quickly down his face, his voice strangled and pained.

And there, frozen in the ice, eyes closed as if he was sleeping, was the one person who could make Coran happy no matter the day or the time. The person he desperately wanted more than anything in the world, right now.

“Lance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so this fic's title is really just a HUGE spoiler lol. 
> 
> So DragonDown (my first beta who moved away, remember?) knew about this story months before I even decided to start writing it. And when she read the title of the first chapter she literally looked me in the eyes and said "Really? That's incredibly heavy-handed, you know." Anyway, this story has kinda evolved a bit, and I've been tempted to change the title but then no one would be able to find it again, so I kept it. 
> 
> But don't think the story's over yet, folks! We still have five or six chapters to go! The next three or so are actually the main focal point of the whole story, actually, so get pumped! (I know I say that every time but I'm hyped for this so much like omg. I'm already dreaming about the sequels.)
> 
> The next chapter might be a long time coming, since I got too excited and wrote the middle of one chapter then the end of the other and now I have to go in and fill it out and make it smooth. I'll try to get it to y'all as fast as possible! 
> 
> See you next chapter!


	12. A Frozen Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! So, I got sick again (I have the immune system of a dead fish.), so the reason I'm updating this is because I only had to edit it and I don't feel good enough to do homework (who needs to study for tests anyway?).
> 
> Thanks again to Megan and her lovely, toweled head for editing this.
> 
> Anyway, here's chapter 12!

Everything ground to a halt. Allura was pretty sure all of them had stopped breathing.

Lance was  _ here _ . He wasn’t on a Galra ship. He wasn’t a prisoner of the Empire. He wasn’t being tortured, or brainwashed, or starving, or dead. He was here, sleeping all those months away, his face peaceful and protected by layers and layers of ice.

Allura almost collapsed, all tension in her body leaving her. The relief swept over her like a wave, causing her hands and shake and knees to go weak.

“Lance.” Hunk had whispered, the name echoing about the walls. 

That’s when Allura straightened.

Something was wrong.

Why was Lance outside of his lion? Why was he frozen, too? What had happened to cause this huge explosion of ice? Why was Lance encapsulated in ice with two Galra soldiers holding his arms? Why was—

“Are those handcuffs?” Pidge asked, her voice a squeak. 

Allura’s eyes had seen them, too. They were the same as what she had worn in her brief visit to the Galra Headquarters. She remembered how uncomfortable they were. 

Why was he in them? There was no ship nearby except for probably the Blue Lion, but they were far enough away that Hunk hadn’t picked up her reading yet. Why had he been so far away from his lion in dead space?

And why did he feel like that?

Allura blinked, trying to identify the uneasiness in her heart. Something was wrong with Lance. 

Tentatively, she put her hand in front of her, the ice cold even through the suit. It glowed faintly beneath her touch and she searched, trying to read him. She had always been sensitive to quintessence. After all, that was how she had matched lions and paladins. 

But this felt wrong.

Normally, in lion-imposed stasis, the quintessence would be half the paladin and half the lion. This is what would allow the paladin to leave whenever they deemed the conditions that put them there over.

But this time, there were three essences mixed up in the ice. There was the Blue Lion, who was the strongest party, a foreign essence she did not recognize in the slightest, and, much too small and much too distant, was Lance. 

Allura approached it, feeling her way towards Lance, trying to discover what had happened when suddenly there was an explosion of color and light, blue blinding her and a roar sending her reeling backwards. She felt claws swipe at her before she broke contact, gasping at the shock of it. Coran caught her, concern filling his eyes. 

The Blue Lion had attacked her.

“What happened?” Hunk asked after Allura had blinked the light out of her eyes. “Is something wrong? Is Lance not okay?”

“Lance is okay,” Allura said, standing up, shaking. “I think.”

“You think?!” Hunk skwaked. 

“He’s alive,” Allura tried for a smile. “I can feel his mind in there, somewhere, but the Blue Lion won’t let me get near him.”

“Is he hurt?” Shiro asked, his eyes dark.

“I don’t think so…” Allura looked back up at Lance. Aside from the bruises and marks on his suit he seemed relatively okay. For someone who had apparently taken the Galra on practically alone twice, he could definitely have gotten off worse. “It feels like she doesn’t know who I am.”

Allura thought for a moment. The Blue Lion had sensed her coming, but didn’t attack until she sought Lance. Was this something she had done to protect him? If so, from what?

“Why do you say that?” Pidge asked. 

“Well,” Allura glanced at the other girl from the corner of her eye, “I do not believe that she would have attacked me if she knew who I was.” She saw the others’ eyes widen. 

“It’s alright,” Allura tried, giving a smile. “She did not actually hurt me, and she only attacked when I tried to find Lance.”

“Why would she do that?” Pidge tried again.

“I’m...not quite sure…” Allura glanced at Coran, who had taken out a tablet and was typing away rapidly. “Coran?”

“I think I know what’s going on,” Coran said, a mad light in his eyes. He clicked a few more things before his eyes lit up. “Here it is!” he exclaimed. He read a few lines before reading aloud. 

“Apparently, the Blue and Green Lions are both capable of inducing stasis outside of their cockpits. All the lions can activate it within the cockpit, but none of the others outside the craft. It seems that the Green Lion can only do one type of stasis, while the Blue can do two.”

Coran read a little more before continuing. “Both Green and Blue can induce what’s commonly called a ‘Saving Stasis,’ where the pilot and lion are equally in charge of when they go in and out of stasis. Normally, it is only activated if they have been mortally wounded but help is too far away. It doesn’t last long, but it can save a paladin’s life.”

“What’s the other one?” Pidge asked. Her eyes full of that curious light. Allura smiled in spite of herself.

“The other is called ‘Lockdown Stasis.’” Coran smiled at Pidge a little before continuing. “Apparently, only the lion is in charge of when it is activated and deactivated. It’s rarely activated as a result of physical damage. It’s normally used for—” Coran stopped abruptly, his eyes widening considerably as he read ahead.

“What?” Allura asked, impatient. “What is it?”

“It’s…” Coran swallowed. “It’s normally used as a method to prevent the pilot from releasing sensitive information to the enemy.” 

There was a long pause, everyone imagining their own horrors, before Coran sighed. 

“What happens is the Blue Lion encases her paladin in ice, so as to prevent physical damage, and then buries their consciousness within herself to protect it from mindreading and the like. This type of stasis is activated if the pilot has fallen or is about to fall into enemy hands and has information they are desperate to keep safe. The Blue Lion normally knows what her paladin is trying to protect, and will only release the stasis if those things are proven to be safe.” Coran swallowed. “However, prolonged stasis can sometimes cause damage to Blue. During this type of stasis, she becomes hypervigilant and suspicious of almost everything. They...they don’t recommend maintaining it for more than a week.”

“A  _ week _ ?!” Hunk cried. “Lance has been frozen for  _ months _ ! What happens if it goes over a week?”

“It says that she can become completely blind to every ally except the one she swore to help protect.” Coran ran his hand through his hair. “Apparently there’s a case from many years before I was born where this stasis was maintained for three weeks and Blue killed the Green Paladin.” They all looked at Allura.

“Don’t…Don’t try to sense Lance again,” Shiro said, his voice tired. 

Allura nodded back, even though her heart sunk. How were they to know what had caused Lance to freeze the planet over now?

“So,” Shiro scrubbed at his eyes, “how are we supposed to break Lance out of it?”

“We’ve got to make our case to Lance,” Coran said, glancing at the body frozen before them. “We have to somehow convince the lion that whatever she was protecting is safe. The way to do that it either to talk to the body of the paladin, or to the lion herself. Since we can’t find Blue, we’re going to have to talk to Lance.”

They all looked at Lance. 

He really looked like he was sleeping. His face was smooth and relaxed in a way that Allura had only seen when he was in the healing pod. Even though the soldiers had a grip on his arm, they seemed to be in the process of letting go of him when they were frozen. 

This, while not being as harsh as believing that he was being held hostage by the Galra, was still very unpleasant. 

He was here. All the paladins were now gathered and their team was finally in one place, but they weren’t complete. Lance was here, frozen in ice ment to protect him from whatever he’d seen as a threat. But the only beings here were his friends. There was no threat here. Didn’t the Blue Lion recognize that?

Allura was reminded of the last time Lance was in stasis. She remembered the anxiety in the whole castle while they waited for the pod to release him and prove to them all that he was okay. 

She had really hated that feeling.

“So,” Pidge asked after a long silence, “does anyone know what he was trying to protect?”

“It’s gotta be one of us, right?” Hunk said, placing his hand on his chest. “I mean, he’s frozen in a pillar in a cave made in a  _ gigantic ice shell  _ that’s covering an _ entire planet _ . I think trying to protect Voltron is the only thing that would have made him do that out here.”

“So, what,” Keith asked, “we just tell the lion that everything’s okay and that all the lions are healthy?”

“I guess?” Hunk said, cocking his head slightly.

“Can the lion hear us now?” Pidge turned to Coran, peering at the tablet. “Or do we have to invoke her somehow?”

“It looks like you have to address her directly.” Coran scrolled through a few more pages before looking up. “Just like start your sentence with ‘Great Blue Lion’ or something and she should listen. It looks like if you just talk to her she won’t attack, but doing anything else could get you frozen, too.”

“So then we talk to her,” Shiro said, determination setting his features. He turned to look at Lance, a shadow passing over his face. “We convince her that he’s safe.”

Allura saw the light in his eyes mirrored in Pidge and Hunk. They were determined. They were so close. They wouldn’t let their friend down. 

Allura set her jaw and looked at the Blue Paladin. She wouldn’t let him down, either.

“Let’s get to work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so in my mania I actually have written all the way through chapter 14. I don't keep a schedule, so when they get put up is when I finish editing them, and when my roommate has time to edit my stuff. I only have about three more to write, but the chapters are probably only going to get longer. 
> 
> I already got prequels lined up, so don't think that He Sleeps is ending anytime soon! I'm trying to get most of them out by Christmas, because I never seem to want to write in the Springtime. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all liked this chapter. I'm sorry it's a shorter one, but that's only so the others can be even longer!
> 
> See you next chapter!


	13. A Burning Desire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh gosh! Super sorry this took so long! I had midterms, and all these other things to do (one of my friends was dealing with a rough time and he is bae so we all dropped everything to protect him). 
> 
> Also, introducing my new beta: Erin! Megan is still here and helping, but Erin is now on the case as well! Neither of them know anything about Voltron, tho... Anyway, many thanks to them and their hard work reading my shit while all of us are in college and writing papers constantly.
> 
> Also! I'm not sure how many of you guys noticed, but He Sleeps is part of a series now! I've actually already posted a second fic. It gives a tidbit about what was happening in the castle while Keith, Coran, and Allura were just chilling out waiting for Lance and the others. You should check it out if that interests you!

“This isn’t working,” Keith grunted from where he leaned on a pillar they had certified as free of frozen bodies. They had been trying for hours now, each person pleading and begging Blue to let Lance wake up, to come back, that everyone was safe and alive and here just waiting for him. 

But nothing had worked.

There was no response, no movement, no indication of any kind that Blue had even  _ heard them _ . Only Allura’s certification that  _ something _ was listening to them kept them going.

Keith knew that Hunk was probably suppressing most of his panic, but with each word spoken and no sign of change the larger boy had gotten smaller, his breaths becoming shorter and faster. They had removed their helmets about an hour ago, Coran scanning and realizing that there was enough air here, for some reason, and Hunk deciding that it would be best to have their faces fully visible in order to wake Lance. Keith was surprised that Hunk hadn’t breathed all the air up in these ice caves yet. 

Keith had given up pretty early. Or maybe it was better to say that he hadn’t ever really started trying. Lance was his rival, after all, and he probably hated his guts anyway, so why would anything Keith said have any affect on his condition? It might only make the lion more agitated, and he definitely didn’t want to die at the hands of a giant robot cat.

“No, it has to be.” Keith glanced at Pidge and saw her eyes had become misty. “It has to be working. He can’t...he can’t just be stuck there.”

Keith looked back at Lance. 

He looked  _ way _ too peaceful. That was the thing that irritated Keith. Lance was supposed to be expressive. His face wasn’t supposed to be that blank, that  _ serene _ . He was supposed to be loud and obnoxious, his face broadcasting his every emotion for the world to see. His emotions weren’t supposed to be so muted. There was plenty of that already, with Shiro, Pidge, Keith and Allura. Lance was supposed to have enough expressions to make up for all of them.

He couldn’t imagine how much it hurt Hunk and Pidge, though. They had been his teammates long before the others had. At the Garrison, Keith had avoided Lance like the plague, but they both had to work alongside him everyday. 

There was a sniff, and Keith saw tears streaming down Hunk’s face. It looked like the dam had finally broken.

“I don’t think it’s working,” Hunk reiterated. “I don’t think  _ anything  _ is working. Something is super wrong here. We’re at the edge of the atmosphere. There shouldn’t be any gravity here. There shouldn’t be any air. Something is wrong, and Lance is stuck in the center of it.” 

He turned to Allura and Shiro. “What if Blue didn’t even make this ice? Or what if she was corrupted somehow? Maybe the Galra had already gotten ahold of her. They clearly got ahold of Lance!” He gestured wildly at the pillar.

“What if the lifeforms inside Blue are Galra?” Hunk almost screamed, pulling at his hair.

“That’s not possible.” Coran stepped forward, raising his hand toward Hunk like he was a frightened animal, his face tense with worry. “After we captured Sendak, I read his life signs. I know what Galra vitals look like. That’s not what they were.”

“Okay,” Hunk allowed, “but what about the sentries? They aren’t organic. You said there were only two lifeforms and rations that were organic on board, but what about other robots? What if they, like, infected Blue somehow? What if they took control? What if those two aliens Lance tried to help were double agents?!”

“Hunk, calm down.” Shiro placed a hand on Hunk’s shoulder, his eyes pleading. “You’re only making yourself more upset.”

“I have a  _ right  _ to be upset!” Hunk practically screeched, shaking off Shiro’s hand and taking a few steps back. “My best friend is trapped in an ice pillar inside a huge cavern and is being held captive by a giant robotic cat!” Some of the fire seemed to leave him, his shoulders slumping and his eyes tired and sad. 

“It’s just so hard,” he practically whispered. “He’s right here, but he isn’t. I can’t hold him, I can’t hug him, I can’t ask how he’s been or listen to him brag or ramble or laugh. He’s not supposed to be  _ silent _ .”

The cavern was quiet, only the soft panting of Hunk echoing off the ice. Tears slipped off his cheeks and dripped onto his shirt. Keith felt a twinge in his heart as Hunk scrubbed at his eyes.

“I mean,” Hunk tried to backtrack, “I’m glad he’d not being tortured by the Galra. I’m glad he’s not hurting. But I want him to be  _ here _ . I want him to be here to brighten my day and to sing horrific renditions of pop songs at the worst possible times of night. I want him to flirt horribly with everyone we come across and pick meaningless fights with Keith. I want him to laugh and cry and make really bad laser impressions and talk about parades and taking down Zarkon like it’d only take a single punch from Voltron.” Hunk breathed in a shaky breath.

“I want Lance.”

They were still. No one moved for a while. 

Then Shiro took a step forward, his hand gently resting on Hunk’s shoulder before squeezing. 

“It’s okay.” Shiro gave a soft smile, his eyes kind and wet. “He’s right here. He’s not across the stars like he used to be. We can get him.” He looked at the rest of them. “I know it’s frustrating, but we’re too close to getting him. We can’t stop now.”

Pidge gave a vigorous nod, scrubbing at her face angrily before taking a few steps and punching Hunk gently in the side.

“Don’t get so worried, Hunk,” Pidge said, her voice soft. “Lance would be mad.”

Hunk sniffed loudly, scrubbing at his face before offering a small smile to her. Coran stepped forward, placing a hand on Pidge’s shoulder and looking sadly at Hunk. 

Keith and Allura weren’t quite sure what to do. Neither one was exactly the best at comforting others. However, Keith was saved from the awkwardness by a sudden intrusion from the planet. 

He was floating in space. The sudden weightlessness threw Keith off guard, and he spun a little before righting himself. He looked around, and all he saw were Galra ships. The ice was gone and so were his friends. Before him was a giant Galra warship, the bay doors opening slowly in the distance.

“Hunting Voltron is gonna be  _ so  _ much easier now,” a voice gloated behind Keith. He spun to see the two soldiers free from the ice, holding tightly to Lance’s arms as he sagged between them. They were in the dead of space, the Blue Lion floating limply not too far behind them. Light at their backs and the growing proximity to Keith led him to believe that they were jetting to take Lance into the large ship behind them. 

Lance’s eyes were half lidded, the bruises on his face igniting a fire in Keith. The others had said he had been pretty beat up, but seeing for himself stung. They were much more pronounced here than in the ice, which had apparently still allowed his body to heal. 

What was especially confusing, however, was that the Blue Lion didn’t seem all that banged up. 

“Yeah,” the other Galra responded, chuckling slightly under his breath. “Intel says that we can use the Blue Lion to find the others. Not too far back we got word that they had spotted the Yellow Lion flying solo. They must still be split up. If we have the Blue Lion, Voltron won’t make an appearance.”

“Hey,” a third soldier who was slightly behind them said, disgruntled, “don’t talk about info while carrying the prisoner.”

“Aw,” the first one said, waving the third off. “He’s too out of it. No way he can hear us.”

“I heard that Lord Zarkon practically destroyed the Red Lion,” the second continued, ignoring the third. “Isn’t that the one the Blue Lion connects to?” 

Keith saw Lance’s eyes clear, suddenly snapping wide open. The rest of his body remained limp, so the soldiers carried on.

“Yeah,” the first nodded. “We can defeat a defenseless paladin easy. One fleet should be enough. Especially since Haggar figured out how to get information from the lions without having to enter the forcefield.”

Suddenly, Keith was slammed by a wave of emotion. He was confused. None of the others had mentioned feeling any emotions. And yet here he was, a blue pulse beating alongside his at twice the pace, feelings of sudden realization screaming in his ear.

He shouldn't have left Blue.

He left her unattended, and now they could find Red. They could find Keith, and then Shiro, and then Pidge and then Hunk and Allura and Coran. He felt despair rise up at the back of his throat like bile, a feeling of warmth and light being ripped to shreds shivering over his spine and shoulder blades.

He'd lost one family. He would not lose another.

Keith felt the scream instead of hearing it.

Lance's face didn't change, but the air around them did. It condensed, forming a pocket of denser atmosphere where it shouldn't have been. The soldiers stopped moving, looking around in confusion while Lance stared straight ahead. The air ripped around them, Lance’s voice joining his own internal chaos.

“What the?” the second soldier looked around. His jetpack cut out, just as Lance’s whole body seized.

Keith felt the fear and anguish in Lance's heart swirling inside his own. It was fast and furious and Keith felt like the rapids would carry his body away.

Suddenly, there was a spark.

Something else, something that wasn't Lance or Blue, connected with them.

It felt like Lance, but not Lance, and the blue voice inside him was joined by yet another. He saw black and red and green all swirling around, yellow and blue circling them. Orange seemed to reach out from the planet below, it’s long fingers grasping desperately at the blue. There was a merging of wills, and it solidified, the blue turning white and shielding the green and red and black and yellow from everything.

The Galra soldiers were screaming, trying to distance themselves from Lance, but everything had slowed down. They wouldn't make it.

The ice began on Lance's lips, which Keith thought was the worst of all. It spread over his face, covering his shoulders and arms and trapping the Galra soldiers in seconds that felt like minutes. The ice hummed with desire to protect.

Keith had never been good at emotions, but these seemed to be two voices chanting as one.

_ Just keep them safe _ , they spoke in Keith’s mind, blue and orange spiralling behind his eyes.  _ Just keep them safe until they’ve healed. _

The ice had begun to reach towards the Blue Lion, its dark eyes lighting up as the ice approached.

Ice neared Keith, and part of it touched him.

Immediately, his whole body was jolted as if with electricity. This ice was for  _ him _ . This ice was to protect  _ him _ . Lance had done the impossible in order to save  _ him _ , the one who he always fought and claimed to hate, the one who had abandoned him on a planet tied to a tree, the one who had hated him while waiting uselessly in the castle with his own mistakes.

Lance's desire to protect Keith had been so strong his had made pillars of ice that were invincible even to the Galra.

Keith felt something in him give.

There had been a knot in his heart that he hadn't realized was there. It had been rubbing him wrong and chaffing against his chest, but now it came loose, releasing all the bile into his system. He found himself asking why Lance would have protected him. Why would Lance care what happened to him?

Then an answer came, tinged in orange and white. Pictures of group dinners, of fights on distant planets, of laughing at the worst of times. Pictures of Hunk toiling away in the kitchen and tinkering with engines, of Pidge grumpily brushing them off and typing away on the computer, of Shiro laughing with them and leading them all with a determination and strength during missions, of Allura smiling and conspiring with the mice and leading with a strong hand, of Coran burying himself in a wall attempting to fix something and calmly directing them in their exercises with a smile on his face, of Keith hugging Erusians and cutting down enemies was he snuck along the Balmera. 

Then there were images that were tinted navy. There were images of Hunk crying out his worries, of Pidge screaming in frustration and anger that she couldn’t find her family, of Shiro having nightmares that bled into his waking hours, of Allura crying in the hallway not long after she had destroyed her father’s AI, of Coran telling stories of his home and the depth of sadness in his eyes, of Keith just before he took on Zarkon and his face twisting into that of a madman. Concern accompanied all of them, the desire to fix it strong and thrumming inside him.

These were things Lance had seen. They were things that Lance knew about. Keith hadn’t realised exactly how attentive the airhead had been. 

The orange hummed back, feelings of warmth and family lighting behind his eyes.  _ Of course he would pay attention _ , it seemed to say.  _ You’re his family, after all _ .

Keith felt all the bile rise to the back to his throat. Lance had raised this whole castle of ice to protect his family. He had done it to protect the people he loved, to protect all of the members that he cared for and respected more than himself. He saw faded shadows of Lance’s siblings and cousins standing beside the rest of them, and Keith understood why Lance hadn’t asked to go home. Even though he’d been homesick to the point of crying, Lance had never asked to go back to Earth. 

Both of his families were important. He would not abandon one for the other. 

And, most amazingly, Keith saw himself in this image of Lance’s family. 

There he was, right beside Hunk and a young girl was pigtails in her hair and smile on her face that was missing a few teeth. 

He was there. 

Lance saw him as family.

Keith sunk to his knees, not even consciously realizing that the vision had ended long before and that he was back on solid ground.

Tears pricked at his eyes as he leaned over, his whole body shaking. 

Lance saw him as family. No one besides Shiro had ever done that before. 

The orange and blue and white slipped from his mind as a large hand came to rest gently on his shoulder. Distantly, Keith could hear Shiro asking if he was okay, but he jumped to his feet, desperation tearing at his heart. 

“Lance!” Keith cried, staring at the boy’s sleeping face. “I’m here!” He was vaguely aware of the other paladins looking at him, but he didn’t care. He pressed on.

“I’m here,” he said again. “And so is Red. I’m okay. You kept me safe, Lance. You kept me safe. Red’s fixed now. I can defend myself. And I’m with Allura and Coran and Shiro and Pidge and Hunk. We’re all together now. We’re all okay. We’re all safe.”

He paused, panting, feeling everyone’s eyes burning his back before diving in again.

“You did great,” Keith said, his voice only slightly softer. “You protected your family, Lance. And we’re all together now. But we’re not complete.” Keith tried to convey how okay he was to the giant lion he realised he was talking to. He wanted Lance to  _ know _ . 

“All we’re missing is you.”

Silence fell. Keith panted slightly. He wasn’t used to being this expressive. Not with this many people watching. And not with emotions this strong. It had worn him out.

At first, Keith thought that nothing had happened. Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe Lance hadn’t tried to save him. Maybe Lance really  _ did _ hate him, and speaking up had only made things worse, had only made Lance get stuck forever in this limbo of frozen stasis, unable to ever—

There was movement. Keith’s eyes were drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

It was a tear.

The neon blue traced its way down Lance’s cheek, the rest of his face unmoving. Then came another, from his other eye. Then another. They traced down his face, gathering below his chin before falling to hit the base of the pillar where the ice cave floor’s darker blue was visible. 

Two large eyes lit up on the wall. Keith took a step back, watching as the glowing outline of the Blue Lion cast a shadow on the entire cavern. 

A glowing blue line extended from the base of the wall below the lion and quickly connected with the pillar, all the frost covering the underlying glass-like surface disappearing and the ice glowing faintly.

There was a sick snapping sound, and two large cracks formed beside Lance, the fissures beginning at the floor of the cave and cutting through the Galra soldiers at his sides. The two chucks fell off, the impact of them almost causing Keith to lose his footing. The Galra soldiers lay on the floor, still encased in ice, but never able to recover. Keith shivered. Is that how all the Galra Lance froze died?

Neon blue lines appeared around Lance’s head before radiating outward. They soon formed an outline around his body. There was another crack, and the handcuffs that had been latched onto Lance’s wrists were broken into two. 

Bubbles started rising from Lance’s nose. They traveled up and around inside the glowing outlines, turning the ice to water. 

Suddenly, the ice before them shattered, and freezing water spilled into the room with Lance in it. 

Keith dove forward, grabbing Lance before he hit the floor with more reflex than thought. He lifted him up by the shoulders, Hunk having rushed to kneel by Keith’s side. Keith turned Lance onto his back and leaned him into Hunk’s arms. He was shivering, his lips blue and eyes squeezed shut. Hunk quickly slid Lance’s helmet off, brushing his hair aside as tears poured down Hunk’s face. 

Keith felt all of his worry and anxiety come to a peak. What if Lance was angry? What if he was hurt? What if he’d gotten sick from being in the ice for so long? His lips were blue and he was shivering. He might be sick. The last thing Keith wanted to do was send Lance back into a stasis pod. 

“Lance?” Hunk’s voice was soft, a tone that Keith had become all too familiar with in the past day. 

Slowly, Lance opened his eyes.

He blinked a few times before they focused. He turned them to Hunk, the sky blue a color Keith had never thought he’d miss.

“How you doin’?” Lance slurred.

Hunk blinked. Everyone stopped. There was complete silence, and Keith could have sworn that if crickets could survive in space they’d be completely audible.

“Unbelievable,” Pidge muttered. “You’ve been in a coma for two months and the first thing you say is a  _ F.R.I.E.N.D.S. _ reference.”

“Hey,” Lance gave a sleepy smile that made the room feel about ten degrees warmer, “we were on a break, weren’t we?”

That seemed to break the spell of worry and anxiety that had hung over Team Voltron for the past few months. Shiro snickered, and Keith felt Coran let out a puff of breath behind him. 

“That doesn’t even make sense!” Pidge cried, a small smile on her face. “In context, or out of it!”

Lance shrugged, his eyes still a little foggy and his body still shivering slightly. 

“Why must you always quote memes?” Hunk used the hand he wasn’t using to support Lance to wipe away his tears, a smile visible around his hand.

“I gotta keep up to date with my pop culture references,” Lance shrugged weakly.

“That’s from 1997!” Pidge cried, throwing her hands in the air. “That’s been outdated since before you were born!”

Lance laughed, his body shaking as he rolled a little into Hunk’s chest. He scrunched up a little more, rubbing his hands across his arms in an attempt to warm himself. The color was starting to come back to his face, and Hunk held him closer.

“God, I missed you,” Hunk breathed. Lance butted his head against his chin, laughing softly.

“I missed you guys, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For all of you confused by the F.R.I.E.N.D.S. tag that's been up there for a while, that's because I wrote this and then tagged the fic before it was edited. You didn't miss anything, because they're in this chapter. 
> 
> And happy birthday, in case it's any of y'all's birthdays. I gave you a present. 
> 
> I actually only have three more chapters left to write, and one of those three is halfway finished. Don't give up hope, tho. I'm planning so many one-shots, and maybe even a longer fic to explain a few character's adventures before this one. Basically, get ready for a lot of prequels. Maybe even a sequel. Depends on how I feel. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for the comments and kudos! I really appreciate them, and sometimes when I lose the will to write I read them and suddenly want to write a novel! Thank you all so much for the love! 
> 
> See you next chapter!


	14. Reunion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so Megan has been super sick recently and Erin has been dead inside, but I don't want you guys to have to wait with just that, so I'm going to post this before they've looked at it. Whenever they get to it I'll fix it, but I figured I should make it throwback thursday (so throwback that it's not even a thursday) to when I first started this fic and would post without anyone looking at it for a while. So yeah, please let the mistakes pass my wonderful betas have been busy.
> 
> That being said, enjoy!

“Ugh,” Lance whined, uncurling from Hunk and placing his face in the crook of his arm. “I have got the  _ worst  _ headache right now, geez.”

Pidge smiled. He was finally here. After all these months of worry, all these months of lost sleep and horrible nightmares, they were all together again. They were all in one piece.

“Is your head the only thing that hurts?” Coran asked, softly placing a hand on Lance’s knee. 

“Uh,” Lance said, shifting everything slightly, “it kinda hurts to breathe too deep and I’m, like, super sore, but other than that I think I’m fine.”

Keith stood, leaving the inner circle to let Pidge take his place. Shiro moved and placed his hand on Keith’s shoulder, pulling him from going too far away.

“How’d you figure it out?” Shiro asked, his eyes lighter than they had been in a while.

Keith blushed slightly, clearly remembering what a blubbering mess he’d just been. “I had a vision.” Keith shrugged, then looked at the others with an accusatory look. “None of you guys said that you could feel emotions in those, by the way. A warning would have been nice.”

Pidge cocked her head at that. “We didn’t.”

Confusion lit Keith’s features. “I got pretty much all of Lance’s emotions the whole time.”

“That wasn’t all me, buddy,” Lance spoke up, not moving. “That was Vitzkug. She’s the one doing the air here.”

Pidge blinked. “What?”

“How can a planet have emotions?” Hunk asked.

Lance shrugged. “She is very old. Also, she likes grain but the Galra took it. Poor Vitzy.”

Coran knit his brow. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I’ve been asleep for…” Lance paused, peaking out from under his arm. “How long have I been frozen?” He paused, but before anyone could give him an answer he slid his eyes back under his arm. “Right, 68 Earth days, thanks Blue. That’s a long time to sleep. I’m not quite awake yet.”

“I thought you were the champion of sleeping way too long,” Pidge teased. 

Lance huffed, his eyes peaking out again. “I sleep a totally normal amount, Pidge. You just need to sleep more.”

“Sorry to interrupt the Great Sleep Debate,” Coran interjected softly, “but why were you outside your lion?”

Lance sighed, long and hard, letting his arm fall off his face and staring up at the roof of the cavern. 

“Well,” Lance started, uneasy, “I halfway surrendered, halfway got ambushed. I had just gotten—” 

Lance sat bolt upright, almost hitting Hunk as he awkwardly got to his feet. Hunk yelped, reaching for him as Lance wobbled, but he slid by and his hands attached firmly to Shiro and Pidge’s arms. His grip was strong, but she could feel the underlying shakiness in his muscles. 

They hardly had time to register surprise before he was dragging them across the room, weaving around pillars and heading for the opposite wall. His eyes glowed faintly and the Blue Lion lit up again, this time the icy shield melting. As they approached, she knelt down, opening her mouth for her paladin.

“Wait here,” Lance ordered, releasing Shiro and Pidge. “I have a surprise.”

He marched into Blue, disappearing from sight pretty quickly. Curiosity sparked in Pidge. What did he have? She had never seen Lance look that intent on doing something since they’d rescued Shiro. What was it? Was it the aliens that were in his ship?

Time kept dragging on as they waited. Pidge grew cold, and was glad Hunk and the others had followed. There was more body heat this way. 

She looked around. The ice pillars were the thickest here. She could hardly see through them, Yellow and Red completely hidden by a forest of ice.

“Just go!” they heard Lance cry, exasperated. It was accompanied by an “oof!” that definitely wasn’t him. Were these the aliens he’d rescued?

An unsteady pair of legs appeared at the top of the ramp. They were clad in Galra purple, and Pidge recognized them as the same as the other prisoners had had. 

The legs continued down the ramp, and second with a slight limp following. Pidge’s curiosity was piqued. What had happened to Flinx and/or Jagis?

When she could see their faces, however, her heart stopped. All breath left her, while at the same time she heard Shiro gasp. Everything inside her collapsed in on itself, as she looked at the two Lance had kept safe inside his lion.

It was her father. 

And Matt.

Oh god. 

Everything inside her expanded rapidly, and a scream of laughter bubbled up inside her. She threw herself at them, holding back only slightly as she realised they were both thin and probably weak. Her weight nearly sent them falling to the ground, but Lance steadied all of them before letting go and stepping off the ramp. 

“Dad!” Pidge cried, tears falling from her eyes again. “Matt!” Her voice was muffled as her face was burried into their clothes.

Her dad laughed. “Hey, Katie.” His voice was weaker than it used to be, but, oh god, she could hear him. He was right here. He was fine. He and Matt both were. “We missed you.”

Pidge sobbed loudly. All of her worry, all of her anxiety at the thought that her dad and brother were living in the hands of the Galra was washed away, the salt in her tears cleaning her out. Her hands wound tightly in the front of both of their shirts. She wouldn’t let them go again.

“You’re okay.”

Shiro’s voice was shaky. Pidge could imagine his face was white as a sheet, but she didn’t look. She was too busy inhaling the smell of them. Sure, they didn’t smell the same, but underneath she could still smell cold nights by the fire and lazy naps on weekends.

“You are, too.” Matt’s voice was soft. He shifted, leaning forward, and Pidge felt Shiro’s chest pressed up against her back. Shiro’s strong arms circled her and pressed her even deeper into her father and brother’s stomachs. She felt a wetness on her back, and realised that Shiro was crying, too.

They were like that for a while, crying and hugging and softly whispering to each other that they were okay. After a bit, the tears dried up, and Shiro pulled back, releasing Pidge. 

Slowly, she pulled back, too. She kept her hand tangled in their shirts, as if she was afraid that at any moment they would disappear and the dream would be over, and she looked up into their faces.

They were swollen and puffy, dark circles under their eyes and the bones in their face way too pronounced. They looked down at her, smiles brightening their otherwise weary faces. 

Matt glanced up at Shiro. “What happened to your arm?”

Shiro lifted it, looking between his arm and Matt, watching the movements of both. “I’m not quite sure…” 

Concern lit upon Matt’s face. He looked like he was about to say something when Blue suddenly shifted, lifting her head and roaring.

Everyone jumped as the ice around the cavern cracked, the pillars falling into nothing and opening the full volume of the cavern. Pidge had known the room was big, but she hadn’t quite realised  _ how  _ big.

Lance was cackling, leaning heavily on Hunk as Blue stepped forward. Her giant paw stepped over them as she emerged from the indent, ice falling from her body. Pidge pulled her dad and Matt out of the way as she crossed over them. She moved to the middle of the room before plopping down with a loud thud.

Lance was bent over with laughter now, gasping breathing making concern rise at the back of Pidge’s throat. Was he okay?

Eventually, Lance’s laughter died down and he stood up, a hand still resting on Hunk’s shoulder. He wiped away a tear.

“God, Blue,” Lance sighed, his eyes full of mirth. “You can’t just  _ say  _ that!” He chuckled a little more. “You gotta give me time to prepare.” 

“What’d she say?” Pidge asked, stabilizing her dad.

“She said—” Lance’s face suddenly hardened, his eyes snapping to his lion. 

Blue tilted her head up, mouth opening to shoot a beam of light into the roof of the cavern. Lance watched her move, his face tense. The light was a twisted blue and orange. A mighty roar accompanied it, and Pidge could swear she heard a woman screaming, too.

“It doesn't matter now,” Lance sighed relaxing. He looked at Hunk, his eyes sad. “You guys hung out with Borp, Kyrztak, and Gloxtov, right?”

“Yeah?” Hunk replied, his brow furrowed. 

Lance sighed. “Okay, first stop, talking to them.” Lance ran a hand through his hair, wincing slightly before pulling his hand out with faint streaks of blood lining his fingers. “Second, we free all the other prisoners.”

“Oh no you don’t,” Hunk snagged Lance before he could start walking away again. He pointed to Lance’s hand accusingly. “What is that?”

“Blood?” Pidge didn’t like the lingering fog in Lance’s eyes.

“Yes,” Hunk said. “And it’s supposed to stay inside of you. Why isn’t it?”

“Dude I was ambushed in dead space,” Lance snapped, words slurred slightly. When Hunk pulled back, he softened his tone. “It’s minor, I promise. Head wounds always bleed more. Plus, I think this is older. Just hasn’t oxidized yet.”

“I don’t know if I can trust your judgement right now,” Hunk replied. “You were literally just rambling about how you were a little woozy from sleeping too long.”

“Lance,” Shiro still had one arm around Matt, but his face was concerned. “Are you sure you’re okay?” 

“Yeah,” Lance dragged his fingers through his hair again, showing the clean surface to them all. “See? It’s fine. I’m fine.”

Hunk looked skeptical, but Lance met his eyes with tired ernesty. Hunk studied him for a few more seconds before reluctantly permitting the subject to drop. 

Pidge took the opportunity. “So the other prisoners. We can free them?”

Lance flashed her a smile. “Of course! You didn’t think I’d just recklessly endanger all these people, did you?”

Pidge paused at that. How exactly was he planning on freeing them all? What exactly _ was _ all this ice?

“Let’s get down to the surface,” Allura said, taking charge again. “We can tell our stories there.” She looked at Lance, giving him a small smile. “I’m glad you’re okay, Lance.”

“Aw, Princess,” Lance smiled back. “I always knew you liked me.”

Allura rolled her eyes, turning to head back to the pod she and Coran had used to get up here in. Coran crushed Lance in a hug quickly, whispering something that made Lance crack another smile before following Allura. Everyone else started making their way back to the lions, too.

“Hey, Lance,” Pidge called, leaving her father and Matt with Shiro for just a moment and running up to Lance and Hunk. Shiro had missed them, too. “Thanks.”

“It’s cool,” Lance patted her shoulder. “After all, I’ll be there for you.” He paused, then gave his best shit-eating grin. “When the rain starts to pour.”

“Ugh!” Pidge smacked him softly on the arm, disgust resonating through her. 

“What?” Lance tried for innocent. “You guys are my  _ friends _ .”

Pidge gave him a dirty look before falling back to let her dad and brother catch up, laughing into her hand. 

They were back. For the last two months,  _ both  _ of her families had been divided throughout the stars. But now, here they were. Lance was back, completing her second family. And he’d come with a bonus. He’d found and protected her dad and brother. He’d saved both of her families by erecting this huge shield of ice. 

Even though he teased everyone relentlessly, and was annoying and reckless sometimes, he’d given her probably the best present ever. He’d restored her happiness. 

There was no way she could thank him for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, like last chapter, here's a present! Thanks for wading through all that misery to get here, but now you have the two things you've continually asked for! Think of it as a gift from me to you.
> 
> For those of you who were wondering if the Holts were the ones in Blue, you guys called it. You actually lead to the plot hole fix that I like to call Jagis and Flinx. I kinda needed them anyway, but sly misdirection is what inspired me to use them to fix the problem. 
> 
> Okay so the next chapter is the explanation chapter and, whoooooo boooooy, I didn't realize how many questions I had posed and how much world building I had done internally until I started writing it. Sorry if the next one takes a little bit, but I'm not even halfway done with the chapter and it's already 5k+. So, um, this might take a while. Also, the number of chapters has changed because one chapter that is over 15 pages and not even half completed is TOO LONG and Megan might actually die reading it. I'm also thinking of adding an epilogue and a few other chapters for...reasons, so it's in limbo right now. Just stay tuned.
> 
> Also, hurray! Megan and Erin BOTH finally started watching Voltron (though they didn't do it in vigorous sprints like I did and haven't quite completed it yet but whatevs) and really like it so welcome them! Actually, I'd been trying to get Megan to do it for months, so when I saw she was finally watching it I may or many not have had to sit down. Whoops. 
> 
> Anyway, chapter 15 will be coming eventually, I promise. If I takes forever that just means that you'll have an even longer chapter to enjoy.
> 
> Well, see y'all next chapter! (If I don't die writing it holy crap)


	15. The Blue Paladin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not dead!!! Sorry guys, for such a long break, but, as I said, this chapter was REALLY LONG. Like, I wound up cutting it in half. I'M STILL NOT DONE WRITING IT. AH. 
> 
> It also probably didn't help that my mental health decided it was a good time to die so that put an even bigger delay on things. I'm just now coming out of my mental relapse (like, yesterday. Today is the first day I've felt better.) and I don't want you guys to wait much longer so I'm gonna post this unedited, so don't judge me too hard. Megan and Erin also haven't edited it so I can't rely on them either. (Speaking of Erin and Megan, Megan has not finished yet but Erin has and she finally understands my feeling of whiplash.) I'll go back and edit it later. Until then, have fun with this!
> 
> With that said, enjoy The Reveal(TM) Part One.

Shiro was elated. 

But probably not as elated as he should have been.

Lance was back and so were Sam and Matt. That alone was something worth celebrating to him. But there was something wrong. Something deep inside him had him watching his back and set his teeth on edge. 

His intuition was right, it turned out, because as they neared Blue, she turned, her mouth lighting up and preparing to fire. Everyone stopped, terror rising in the back of their throats.

“Blue!” Lance yelled, his voice hard and tone demanding.

The beam stopped charging, but the light remained.

Lance sighed, stepping fearlessly towards the giant robotic cat. Hunk tried to grab him, but his hands only swiped at the air behind Lance’s back.

He placed his hand on Blue’s paw. A spark ignited between them, and Blue relaxed, putting her head down and dropping the light so that Lance could board.

Shiro furrowed his brow. 

Why had that spark been orange?

“So how are we divvying up rides?” Lance asked, standing on the ramp to get into Blue and sliding his helmet on. Shiro had a feeling it was to keep her from firing again.

“I don’t think any of us should ride in Blue,” Shiro said hesitantly, worried about offending her.

Lance nodded. “I figured.” He glanced up, placing his hand on the inside of her head. There was another orange spark, and this time Lance winced.

“Is everything okay?” Hunk asked, stepping closer to him.

“Yeah…” Lance looked around a little before looking at them, his eyes not as bright as before. “She’s just a little...confused, is all.”

Shrio’s eyebrows shot up at that. Why was Blue confused? Did it have something to do with her being stuck in the ice for two months? If Blue was confused, was there a possibility of everyone being in danger?

Blue moved, knocking Lance off his feet to fall farther into the great lion’s head. She stood in a movement that looked an awful lot like she was swallowing him, before she scraped at the floor with her paws as if she was digging. 

“I’m alright,” Lance’s voice crackled over the coms. The other paladins put their helmets back on so they could hear him better. “We’ll see you down below?”

“Be careful, Lance,” Shiro warned, not liking the way blue was acting at all.

Blue swiped one last time before a huge hole opened up in the icy floor, the air glittering as droplets of suddenly-unfrozen water flew up in the not-supposed-to-exist gravity and atmosphere. She dove out, disappearing in a spray of sparkles as her engines lead for a rather hasty retreat.

Shiro looked at the other paladins before they all dispersed, Shiro and Matt deciding to get in Yellow with Hunk while Pidge and Sam got into Red with Keith. They took off, following Lance’s trail. 

The pattern was rather erratic. 

Blue would fly one way before darting another, the bubbles from her boosters flitting all over the sky. Sparkles from her boosters painted the air like the giant map in the control room, and the little grunts and mutters of Lance in his ear did nothing to soothe Shiro’s worry.

“Lance,” Shiro tried to keep his voice steady, “land. Now.”

“I’m trying.” Lance’s voice was tight. “Blue’s not quite…” His voice trailed off as Blue skyrocketed into the ice, causing the whole thing to shudder from the impact of her head. 

“Blue! There are still people in there!” Lance’s voice came over the coms. 

Blue turned on a dime, kicking off from the ice and throwing herself at the planet. Yellow and Red followed, cries off worry from the other paladins seeming only to egg her on. 

She landed with a crash, dust and debris flying everywhere. She rolled around, the sand obscuring everything but small flashes of limbs.

“Blue!” Lance cried again. “She’s not— _ Blue! _ ” 

A laser shot out of the sand, freezing a huge swath of land as it hit. Red dived out of the way just in time to avoid it. 

Suddenly, there was a flash of orange, and the sand began to form around Blue. It stuck to her sides and began to solidify, forcing the lion to hold still. She thrashed, as if trying to escape, before finally relenting and settling down, the fast swishing of her tail broadcasting her irritation loud and clear.

“Lance,” Hunk sounded like her was going to cry again, “what’s going on? Are you okay?”

“I’m...I’m fine, Hunk.” Lance’s voice was part tired, part sad. “Blue’s just...confused. She’s got too many paladins.”

“She’s got what?” Allura’s voice chimed in, a twinge of shock twisted with her words. “What do you mean, ‘too many paladins’? You’re the only one.”

“Yeah, well, about that—” 

Lance was cut off again as Blue lurched forward, trying to escape the sand hug. She roared, firing another shot that Hunk and Coran had to dodge.

“Oh my god,” Lance was clearly exasperated, “ _ Blue _ .” She struggled a little bit more before she calmed, settling into the sand once more. “There.” Lance sighed. “Now just lay here,  _ calmly _ , and figure it out. I’m sure you two can come to some sort of agreement.”

“Who’s coming to an agreement?” Pidge asked. 

“I’ll explain later,” Lance said. Shiro could already see him emerging from Blue. “Right now we should leave her so that she won’t try to kill you guys again. Someone pick me up. I’m not walking to the base.”

“We’ll get you,” Coran called. They landed and Lance jumped in. The paladins then all angled to head towards the base, uneasiness heavy over all the comms. Matt gave Shiro a confused look, but all Shiro could do was give a soft smile in return. He didn’t exactly want to tell the boy he’d just reunited with that he didn’t didn’t know why the giant robotic lion that had come to save him was apparently going crazy now. 

“I don’t get it,” Hunk muttered. The lack of echo in Shiro’s ear told him Hunk had switched his comms off. “Yellow said she should be able to talk to Blue, but she can’t.”

That got Shiro’s attention.

“You can talk to Yellow?”

Hunk blushed, ducking his head sheepishly. He must have forgotten he had passengers. Or that he had forgotten to tell his  _ leader _ some very important information. 

“Yeah?” Hunk’s hands twitched nervously on the controls. 

“For how long?”

“Today.”

Shiro blinked. “Today?”

Hunk nodded. “After I left the group campfire, I ran to see Yellow. She comforted me, and that’s when it started.” He smiled. “I can only hear her when I’m really close, though. Not like Lance and his miles-on-miles communication range.”

Shiro smiled. He placed a hand on Hunk’s shoulder, another brick of happiness added to his emotion house. With Matt at his side, Sam riding in Red alongside Pidge, and Lance finally talking and laughing with them, today was shaping up to be pretty good.

Well, if Blue wasn’t apparently possessed.

Booms and shots of light could still be heard and seen on the horizon behind them, ferocious roaring only slightly muffled by distance.

Hunk furrow his brow. “Yellow is really concerned, Shiro. She doesn’t know why Blue isn’t answering. Something’s wrong.” 

Shiro thought on that, but it wasn’t like he could come up with answers. They’d have to get some information from Lance before they could even start.

Luckily, the base was just ahead. They landed in the hangar where they had left the other lions, and all climbed out.

“What, exactly, is going on?” Allura asked, jumping out of the pod after Lance. Shiro was surprised she had waited until the rest of the team were with them to start her interrogation. “What did you mean, ‘too many paladins?’ What exactly happened?”

Lance put his hands up between them, as if that could somehow shield him. “Look,” he started, his voice calm, “I’ll explain in a second. But everyone needs to hear it.”

“Everyone?” Allura blinked. 

“Lance!”

They all turned to see the three aliens standing on the catwalk above them. Gloxtov leaned over the railing, his eyes alight.

“Hey, guys,” Lance smiled.

The yellow alien let out a sound no human could make and ran down the stairs, barreling into Lance. Lance let out a grunt from the force of the impact and fell onto his back, the alien hanging on and following him down. 

“I knew you did not abandon us!” Gloxtov cried, his third arm wrapped behind Lance’s neck. “I knew it!”

Lance laughed and patted Gloxtov’s back. “Thanks, buddy.” Gloxtov buried his face into Lance’s chest.

Shiro glanced up to see Kyrztak, with Borp riding on his shoulder (as per usual), take the stairs in a much less excited manner.

“So you didn’t leave us,” Borp said, a smile on his strange cat face.

“Not intentionally,” Lance frowned a little. 

“I’m confused,” Matt said. “Who are all these people?”

“I’m not quite sure, either.” Coran offered him a soft smile.

“Oh, right.” Lance hadn’t moved from the floor, letting Gloxtov remain buried in his chest. “Okay, so I think everyone present knows Shiro and Pidge-slash-Katie, but the other guys in space suits are Hunk, Keith, Allura, and Coran.” Lance gestured at each one with his arm. Gloxtov raised his head slightly, watching who he pointed at before burying his face in Lance’s chest again. “The big fluffy purple dude is Kyrztak, the sentient blob of Jell-O with a cat face is Borp, and the guy currently squeezing the life out of me is Gloxtov. These,” he gestured at the two new humans, “are Sam and Matt, Pidge-slash-Katie’s dad and brother.”

Lance let his hand fall to the ground, looking up at the ceiling and letting Gloxtov pretty much just lay on him. 

“It is nice to meet you all.” Borp attempted to bow. 

“And the same to you.” Allura smiled back. She turned back to Lance. “Now what were you saying about the Blue Lion having too many paladins?”

Lance sighed. He raised his hands again, pressing gently on Gloxtov’s shoulders to dislodge the alien from his chest. Gloxtov went unwillingly, coming to stand while Lance kept his hand on his arm. 

Once Gloxtov was standing he seemed to recognize how clingy he was being. A purple blush spread across his nose and he ducked his head, but Lance was upright and grabbed his shoulder. 

Shiro cocked his head. It seemed like neither Gloxtov nor Lance wanted to be separate.

“Yeah so this is a long story,” Lance said. “I feel like yours would be shorter.”

Allura glared at that. “It may, but we need to know what’s going on.”

Lance sighed again. “Look,” he said, taking his helmet off and running his hand through his hair again, “I know you really need to know, but I just woke up from a two month coma? I need a little time to get used to not having two really powerful consciousnesses continually screaming at me.”

Confusion lit upon everyone’s faces, but Lance cut them off before they could say anything. 

“Why don’t you guys tell me what’s up with you while I try to wake up? It’s not like anything I could tell you right now would make much sense.”

“Wow,” Keith deadpanned. “Lance is willing to let someone else talk. I never thought I’d see the day.”

“If I wasn’t so tired I’d take offense to that,” Lance shot back, weariness darkening his eyes but humor on his face. He looked around. “Is there somewhere more comfortable to sit?”

“We have just the place!” Glotov brightened, taking Lance’s free hand and all but dragging him back to the stairs from whence he had descended. 

The other’s followed. Allura seemed like she was going to protest, going to demand that Lance gave her the answers she wanted, but she just sighed and followed. 

Shiro watched the walls, noticing exactly how much they filled him with dread now what he wasn’t dead set on finding Lance.The dark shadows cast in the hallways, the ominus purple glow, the threatening way every footstep would echo off the metal and rebound into your mind like a nail all made Shrio very nervous. He saw how Sam, Matt, and even the other aliens all seemed to tense around every corner as if they couldn’t believe that they would ever be safe within these walls. Shiro himself felt as if a Galra soldier was leading them, not a group of aliens that had only ever helped his teammates before. 

Even the other paladins seemed on edge, the eeriness of the building and shadows of what had happened here haunting them just as much as Shiro. The only one who seemed truly comfortable here was Lance (but Shiro couldn’t tell if that was still the lingering grogginess or the fact that Lance had personally destroyed all the Galra and fortified the planet so much that only the other lions of Voltron could break through) and, oddly, Gloxtov, who seemed as if he greatest friend had just returned and nothing would ruin his mood. 

Eventually, Shiro could see the campsite up ahead. Gloxtov pulled Lance onto a bench, hugging Lance’s arm with his whole body and smiling happily. Hunk quickly took Lance’s other side, cocking his head slightly at the way Gloxtov closed his eyes in pure bliss while holding Lance. 

The others all chose their own places on the benches, but when they realised that there wasn’t enough room for Pidge and Borp, Borp remained on Kyrztak’s lap and Pidge sat between her father’s knees, Matt at his dad’s side and Shiro by his. Shiro placed his human hand on Matt’s knee, happiness igniting again when Matt smiled nervously at him.

“Okay,” Lance drawled, leaning on Hunk, “so who’s going first?”

“I suppose we can,” Pidge said slowly, glancing up at her dad. Lance nodded.

“Well,” Shiro started, and everyone turned to him, “after that telepathic thing Allura did ended, I immediately headed out to find Pidge. I found her in about three weeks, since she wasn’t too far from me. She  _ was _ in a very Galra-heavy sector, however, which slowed the process a lot. It took a while to get clear so we could follow Hunk.”

“After Shiro joined up with me,” Pidge took over, looking at Lance and gesturing with her hands, “we traced after Hunk. It took us over a month because he kept moving—”

“I was continually being chased!” Hunk interrupted, his voice high. “You try to lay low when your lion is large, bright yellow, and not very fast while Galra troops are on your tail. And, unlike you, I don’t have camouflage.”

“I can totally set you up,” Pidge replied, a spark in her eye that told Shiro that she was hatching a new project. “I mean, it would take a while to get working because Yellow is so  _ large  _ but with a few adjustments—” 

“Anyway,” Shiro cleared his throat, hoping to prevent too many unnecessary detours, “we eventually did catch up with Hunk. I suppose it came in handy that Hunk was slower than the other lions because otherwise we never would have caught him.”

“I thought I was going in circles…” Hunk looked down, his face becoming sad. Shiro wanted to comfort him, but there was no need. Lance gently poked Hunk’s side and smiled at him. Somehow, this made Hunk feel better, if the smile on his face was anything to go by. Shiro felt relief flood himself. Gosh, he had missed how easily Lance could cheer the others up.

“Once we caught up we with him we had to hunker down for a little bit,” Shiro continued. “We had to wait for a large battalion of Galra ships to pass over before we finally were able to fly free.”

“I guess it was a good thing Keith wasn’t there,” Hunk smiled mischievously. “He might have stormed them.”

“Hey!” Keith huffed indignantly, but there was a lightness in his eyes. “I thought I could take him, okay?”

“And how long did it take you to fix up Red, hm?” Pidge smiled, her glasses glinting in the firelight. 

Keith flushed, pulling back into himself. “About a month,” Keith mumbled.

“Wow.” Lance smiled. “You really did a number on the old girl, didn’t you?”

“Shut up, Lance,” Keith snapped with no venom. “At least I actually met up with who I was supposed to.”

“I didn’t exactly plan to go into a coma, Keith,” Lance ground out. There was something darker in Lance’s eyes that Shiro couldn’t place, and it set everyone on edge. Lance sighed, clearly forcing whatever it was down, then smiled again. “Plus, you had Allura to guard you.”

“Speaking of which,” Shiro turned to her, trying to prevent the darker mood from staying, “why did you come find us? If you guys had stayed put we would have been here forever.”

“I noticed that you three had stopped moving a while ago,” Allura explained. “We would have tried to find Lance, but his lion was completely off radar. It must have been all this ice.”

“It was actually the magnetic field interference,” Lance shrugged, leaning against Hunk heavily now. “Blue wrapped herself entirely in the magnetic field of the planet when she formed the ice. Vitzkug made it so that all of the ships inside the ice were totally erased to deep and close space scanners. She and Blue were too weak to defend against what the Galra would do if they knew she was in there.”

“Vitzkug?” Allura blinked. “You mean the planet?”

“Yeah,” Lance looked up at the ceiling. “She blocked everything so that the only craft that could find Blue was Yellow.”

“How…?” Allura glanced at Coran, and Shiro saw that she shared everyone’s confusion. What exactly had that ice been?

“I think Sam and Matt should be next,” Lance changed the subject, wincing slightly as Gloxtov pushed away before the alien re-glued himself to Lance’s arm. “I think Shiro and Pidge-slash-Katie would like to know what’s been going on with you two.”

“Will you stop calling me that?” Pidge huffed. “It’s annoying.”

Lance narrowed his eyes. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to get these guys when the only name I knew you by was Pidge? I was  _ very  _ confusing. I think I get to call you that until everyone’s clear on the subject.”

Pidge frowned, but Sam placed his hand on her shoulder, a soft smile on his face.

“I don’t…” he started before faltering. He cleared his throat and then started again. “I don’t know if we can tell you everything, but we can give you the basic details. If you want to hear them.”

Pidge blinked up at them, a soft light to her eyes that Shiro hadn’t seen in a long time. He knew that, for Pidge, finding her family was so important to her that she was willing to leave her team at first. What must it be like to suddenly have them back? Shiro wasn’t sure, but he knew that there was a sort of peace that had settled like a warm blanket around his shoulders. Surely she felt similarly. 

“I want to know,” Pidge said, turning around and getting on her knees before them. She placed a hand on their knees, looking between them. She glanced at Shiro for a second, and he winced. “I want to know what happened.”

Matt grimaced at that, looking down at her hand. He took a breath, then looked up at Shiro. “After Shiro saved me from the ring,” he started, voice low and soft, “I was transfered to work in the mines. They weren’t the same ones that Dad was in, but word still got around when you escaped.” Matt looked down at Pidge again and took her hand.

“After you escaped,” Sam was now looking at Shiro, understanding and a feeling of thanks passing between them so warm that Shiro felt a little dizzy, “Matt and I were both transferred here. The Vitzkugian mines were the work camp closest to Zarkon’s ship, and they wanted us close for leverage, I suppose.

“After the Galra learned that you were a pilot of Voltron, Matt and I were taken off work duty and put in isolation.” Sam shivered, taking Pidge’s hand as well. “I don’t know how long we were there. It felt like years, but we both knew it couldn’t have been.”

A strange mix of anger and sadness filled Shiro’s heart. He knew how horrible the Galra could be first hand. Matt and Sam had been there longer than he had, and so had the other three aliens present. Not only that, but they had been singled out as related to Voltron and punished for it. He couldn't even imagine it. 

Or maybe it was worse that he could. 

Pidge squeezed their hands, a look of sadness on her face. Sam’s softened, looking down at her kindly. Matt smiled a little before running his free hand through her hair.

“There was word that Vitzkug had been completely mined out,” Sam continued. “We were in the process of getting moved out when Lance saved us.”

“Is that why all the Galra ships were in the air?” Pidge asked, glancing over at Lance. 

He nodded. “The command ship had left ahead of everyone because of some politics the guy really wanted to be a part of. The rest of the slaves were in the process of being moved when I tried to get these guys and Jagis and Flinx.”

“Oh yeah, those guys,” Hunk piped up, looking down at Lance. “The one’s with the big tails, right?”

Lance raised an eyebrow at that. “You know them?”

“Well, no. I saw it in a vision.” Hunk corrected.

“Oh,” Lance paused, clearly thinking. He looked up after a few moments. “But yeah. Ships were in the air. It was very difficult to sneak on board without Pidge’s cloaking stuff.”

There was a sparkle in Matt’s eyes. He turned back down to Pidge, happiness and pride lighting his face. “Lance told us about how great you were at messing around with alien tech,” he said, his voice light. He rubbed his hand on Pidge’s head, igniting a squawk from her. “I always knew my baby sister was a genius. However, your have horrible taste in undercover names hadn’t changed.”

“Stop it, Matt!” Pidge tried to push him off, but there was a smile on her face. She eventually wriggled out from under him, which, given how thin he was, was probably an easier task than she let on. She got to her feet and glared at him. “And what’s wrong with the name I chose?”

“Pidge Gunderson isn’t exactly what I would call a covert name, sweetie,” Sam laughed out. 

“The point was that Iverson didn’t know who I was!” Pidge huffed.

“Yeah but there are other names, like Peter, or John, or even Guillermo that you could have chosen that are  _ real _ names,” Matt said.

“Hi, have you met my friend Hunk?” Pidge waved her arm at the larger boy.

“Yeah but that’s a nickname,” Hunk said. 

“Okay but does anyone know what your given name is?” Pidge asked.

“I do,” Lance smiled, proud. “And Hunk has trusted me with it. So you won’t get to—”

“It’s actually Tsuyoshi,” Hunk interrupted. 

A look of smug gratification lit on Pidge’s face while fake despair lit on Lance’s. 

“What?!” Lance sat up straight, his voice scandalized and Gloxtov still clinging to his arm. “Why would you just tell them?”

“Because we’ve been fighting together in space for a while,” Hunk shrugged.

“But I thought we had something special!” 

“Again,” Hunk gestured to the group, palm open, “we’ve been fighting together in space.”

Lance made a noise of indignation. He turned away, wrapping Gloxtov in his arms and swinging his leg over the bench so his back was completely to Hunk. “If you won’t love me, then I suppose Gloxtov will.”

The alien’s three eyes blinked, one at a time, but understanding never appeared. 

“Enough.” Allura stood, her eyes intently focused on Lance. Shiro was surprised that she had lasted as long as she had. “Surely you are ready to talk to us, if you’re able to make jokes. Tell us what has been going on these past three months.”

Lance sighed, letting his grip of Gloxtov loosen slightly. He leaned back against Hunk again, pulling Gloxtov with him.

“Fine,” he breathed out, Gloxtov looking up at him inquisitively. Lance’s face was sad, but he smiled at the alien in his lap. 

“After the wormhole got corrupted, I was flung onto a planet that was mostly ocean called Flumnis. That’s where I met Jagis and Flinx. They were the Prince and Princess of Flumnis, and they were the ones who found me and Blue. Blue got tangled up in this stuff that was kinda like seaweed back on Earth, but waaaaaay stickier. They took me to the castle, which is where I was when Allura did the magic thingy—”

“Synthesised Long Distance Quintessential Lion Convergence,” Allura corrected. 

“Yeah, that.” Lance waved his hand in the air before continuing. “After we clicked off and stuff, the Flumnians got Blue out of the seaweed but apparently Keith stole all of my luck because the Galra tracked me? I wanted to leave to find Keith and Red because  _ holy quiznak _ was there a lot of distance to cover. Were the rest of you that far away because I swear I could have gotten to  _ Earth _ faster.”

“I mean,” Keith spoke up, “Allura found me within two weeks, and that was without using wormholes. Shiro and everybody else seemed to meet up within a month, and the rest of that time was spent coming to find you.”

Lance thought for a second, then nodded. “Okay so yeah, I was  _ really  _ far away. Got it.

“Anyway, I wanted to get to Keith and Red but I couldn’t because Flumnis was discovered by the Galra because I just happened to land there, so I felt like it was my duty to help them out.”

“That’s very noble of you, Lance,” Shiro said, his voice soft. 

Lance waved it off. “It would have been more noble if I had succeeded in helping them, but nope! Flumnis is now 100% gone forever thanks to some magic that some witch named Haggar perfected that allows them to completely drain a planet’s quintessence in one go. The only ones who survived were me, Jagis and Flinx. And Jagis and Flinx were captured.”

“Wait,” Pidge interrupted, “how did just the three of you escape?”

“Oh, well, I’m glad you asked Pidge, because I think you’ll like this part of the program.” Lance’s eyes glinted. “See, Flumnis had always been completely ignored by the rest of the universe. This was mostly because they were so deep in their ocean and the electromagnetic fields of the planet screwed up scanners so bad that everyone else, including Zarkon, couldn’t pick them up. 

“But not trading with any other civilization didn’t stop them in the technology department. God, I wish you could have seen it. They had tech that would put even the Alteans to shame! They had scanners and thingys and all these technological advances that I could hardly tell what was there for aesthetic and what was there to, like, digitally print pizza or something. 

“Which brings me to something else really cool. They figured out what kind of chemical I needed to be able to breathe and then created it synthetically so that I could breathe in their rooms. They also had these really cool hats that would like scan your memories and make a food that tastes and looks exactly like you remember.”

“Whoa, really!” Hunk’s eyes were alight, and so were Pidge’s.

“How did they do it?” Pidge asked, her hands clenched near her chest. “Did the hats have a direct connection to the neurological processes of the human brain? How would it have worked with hair and skin. Did Flumnians have hair? Did it work on you, Lance?”

Lance smiled and nodded. “Yep! It was the best pizza I’ve had since we started school at the Garrison.”

“How did they do it?” Hunk asked eagerly. 

Lance’s face became sad again, the darkness coming back to his eyes. “I don’t actually know.” He relaxed back against Hunk again. “I kept thinking while I was there ‘Pidge and Hunk really should be here, too.’ I wanted to show you guys the planet once we all met up again. But it looks like you won’t ever get to see it.”

There was a sad silence that passed over the group before Lance shook his head, a small smile appearing on his lips.

“But maybe Flinx and Jagis know how it worked. They’re still okay. They’re actually stuck up there in the ice right now, sleeping away.”

“So why were they the only ones who survived?” Shiro asked, very aware that there were Alteans, Balmerans, and Borp present. 

“Well, we were on the Galra ship,” Lance shrugged. “They were able to hack in a make a really cool little backdoor that we can use on the sentries. Its pretty nifty. There are actually five different codes that they’ve given me. They said it was for us to use to help in our fight against them. 

“But yeah, even that wasn’t a complete success. Flinx and Jagis got captured. I had to keep Blue safe and leave them, because I knew the only way I could possibly save them was with Voltron. Another whole fleet of ships had appeared so Blue and I hid out in the depths of the ocean for a few days until the Galra apparently decided that the planet was lifeless enough and left. 

“After that, I headed out after Keith’s signature, which hadn’t moved yet so I assumed that he still hadn’t met up with Allura and Coran. I traveled for about two weeks before I had to stop on Vitzkug for food. I’m pretty sure that I got dropped in almost the center of the Empire, which makes it even more astounding that Flumnis hadn’t been discovered yet.

“Vitzkug was the first planet that wasn’t completely swarming with Galra ships and/or still had some vegetation for me to actually replenish my stores. I was there for a few days before these guys actually greeted me and Gloxtov somehow found some food to give me until I had at least left the most Galra-dense part of the universe.” Lance gestured at Gloxtov, Kyrztak, and Borp. “Of course, by the time they gave me food I had already figured out prof—I mean, Sam and Matt were inside the base.”

“How’d you manage that?” Keith asked. “Weren’t they in solitary?”

Lance grinned. “Why yes, young grasshopper, but I already told you that Flinx and Jagis had given me a way into the Galra mainframe, didn’t I? Even without being weirdly good at breaking into alien tech, the backdoors they created were easy enough to understand even I could do it. 

“I snuck into one of the outer control rooms and used it to get some intel and also to figure out just where in the universe I was. But when I saw that there were two prisoners who were flagged as having a connection to the Black Paladin I knew it was them. I also figured out that Flinx and Jagis had been here for about a week. They’d been flagged with connection to me, but they weren’t in solitary. I was able to talk to them a little bit.

“Talking to them wound up being really useful because I wasn’t able to get a map of the base or anything, so I had to ask them to use their echolocation to help me map out the base. Galran soldiers can’t hear the frequency, and the bots haven’t been programmed to detect it yet because their species was so new to them. We got quite a few looks from a few other slaves who could hear it, but once they saw that a Paladin of Voltron was here they didn’t make a scene or anything, which was nice.”

Lance stopped, blinking. “Oh yeah, also, at some point I started hearing voices?”

“You mean like the voice of the Blue Lion?” Coran sat forward, excitement written on his face. Shiro suddenly remembered that no one had told him that they had heard Lance talking with Blue in their flashbacks.

Lance shook his head. “No. She started talking to me all the time on Fumnis. The other voice started not long after I landed here.”

Hunk placed his hand on Lance’s forehead. “Are you okay, bro? Are you sick?”

Lance pushed the hand off. “I’m fine.” Lance huffed a little. “It was just really weird. Instead of just hearing Blue in my head all the time, I heard two voices. It was really confusing. They would have full conversations before I was able to learn how to just sort of tune them out. They were using my brain to reconnect after a really long time and to catch up and stuff. I didn’t want to get in the way of that.”

Everyone perked up at that. 

“Wait,” Allura’s back was straight as a stick. “To  _ reconnect _ ?”

Lance smiled a little bit. “Yeah.” He sat up, letting Gloxtov remain pressed against his side, but swinging his legs back over the bench to be could face them all.

“The spirit of Vitzkug used to be a Paladin of Voltron. The Blue one, to be exact.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There were thousands of other things I could have said besides "emotion house" but I a) couldn't think of one at 1:30 am, the time I was writing it and b) it made me laugh too much to change. So have fun with that.
> 
> Also, how was that little teaser at the end there? Thought I was finally gonna answer all the questions, huh? Well, I was going to until the chapter passed page 16. Then I decided that cutting it up would be better for both of us.
> 
> Okay, so Thankgiving break for me starts literally tomorrow, but I have so much homework idk if I can use it to write fics like I wanted to... The break until the next chapter shouldn't be nearly as long as this one. I want to finish this and all the subsequent fics before January 20th, so I'm sure I will have at least this fic done by New Years. (Also, did you know that Jan 20th is a friday? that means I can shotgun the whole season and not feel bad. Thank you, Netflix.) 
> 
> That's all for now, I think. I hope you liked it, and as always I love reading your comments and counting the kudos! 
> 
> See you next chapter!


	16. Literally Fuck Me Why is This So Long?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, funny story, finals kicked my ass. I also might have gotten sidetracked with a fandom from my childhood that I went head-deep into (coughyugiohgxcoughcough) that was deeper than it ever had been, and, as such, was not able to characterize Voltron people correctly and was not able to work on this fic. However, I have been revived! I also noticed that I posted the last chapter on nov 18 and this chapter on dec 18, so I'm not technically over a month yet.
> 
> Also, I have run out of titles. This is essentially chapter 15 part 2, but I don't want to throw off the chapter numbers for the rest of the fic, so I'm just making this chapter 16. Fun titles will return next update.
> 
> Side note: I have not had this checked. I have edited it myself, but no eyes except mine (and I guess now yours) have seen this. Sorry for any errors!

There was a long pause. Confusion was the primary thing that was on Shiro’s mind. Why would there have been a Paladin of Voltron that would be this far out? How were they now a planet? Had the planet itself been piloting the Blue Lion before?

Shiro’s mental image of the entire planet of Vitzkug riding on the Blue Lion’s back was interrupted by a tentative hand raise by Matt.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m incredibly confused. Did the planet used to ride in your lion?”

“Oh, no,” Lance laughed a little. “Vitzkug used to have a much smaller body. She was actually from the planet Kirrlistov, which was destroyed eons ago because their star exploded. Her people died out before Altea even existed. She lived at the same time when the Balmerans weren’t fossilised.

“Her people used to be the Defenders of the Universe, since the Alteans weren’t around yet. She and four of her siblings used to pilot the lions. But apparently betraying the other paladins is just a Black Lion thing, because her brother betrayed them all. 

“Vitzkug was actually the first one tricked, and she was lead out here, along with her family, then had the Blue Lion stolen from her.”

“Sounds like a Blue Paladin thing,” Keith interjected, earning him a glare.

“Low blow, dude,” Lance shook his head. “Anyway, they were the only living beings here, and there wasn’t even a solid atmosphere. But she didn’t want her family to die, so she found a way. It just turned out that the center of the planet is entirely water, so she infused her soul into it and  _ Boom! _ she was the planet.”

Lance paused, looking down. “Well, she  _ used _ to be the planet. The Galra mined most of the water out. Apparently it was very useful to one of the higher-ups in the Empire because it matched their quintessence. There was only a little bit left, and it fled to the surface. When I arrived they were mining the last of it. Now there’s barely any water left on the planet.”

Lance glanced back up then, and stopped because of the looks of absolute astonishment on everyone’s faces.

“What?”

“Two questions,” Pidge put her hand up. “One: how did she know the center of the planet was water. Two: why did it have to be water that she used to fuse her soul with the planet?”

“Because the Blue Paladin in the Guardian Spirit of Water?” Lance looked confused.

“Wait, what?” Hunk blinked.

Lance sighed. “Blue guards water, just like Red guards fire and Yellow guards earth.”

“I was never informed of this?” Hunk looked even more confused. “Why?” Lance just shrugged.

“Then what are Shiro and I?” Pidge asked.

“Air and forest?”

Pidge paused thinking. She nodded, then continued. “Okay you answered the second question. What’s the answer to the first?”

Lance shrugged. “Magic?” 

“How do you know all this?” Allura asked, a look of pure shock on her face. “The Alteans have had Voltron for generations. We never knew any of this information.”

“Dude,” Lance turned to her, tiredness sparking in his eyes, “I was awake that whole time. Like, I was consciously aware of everything that was going on around both me and the planet. I was bored. Vitzkug said she’d show me a story so I listened.”

Shiro could see the look of absolute shock on Allura and Coran’s faces, but apparently Keith couldn’t, because he soldiered on. 

“So you’re saying that you’ve been just chatting with the planet we are currently standing on for the past two months?”

“Yep,” Lance nodded.

“And you’re also saying that you were 100% awake and aware of what was going on these past two months?”

Lance’s face twisted into a wicked grin. “Of course, Keithy. That means I got to hear your adorable little speech up there.”

Keith blushed slightly. “We thought you were going to get stuck forever, you ass! Of course I’m going to make a speech!”

“So you  _ do  _ care.”

“Of course I care!” Keith blurted angrily. There was a pause before Keith’s blush went full throttle and Lance smirked again.

“But seriously,” He said turning away from Keith who had hidden his face in his hands, “I knew you guys were here. I just could  _ not  _ convince Blue that it was safe. I’d apparently instigated Vitzkug to initiate stasis with Blue with the intent of protecting Red Paladin, so it wasn’t until Keith made a point of showing up that we were able to convince her it was safe.”

Lance looked back at the blushing Keith, who was now peering over his fingers. “Of course, Keith was being such an  _ emo  _ that Vitzkug had to step in and show him one of my personal memories to get him to step up to the plate.”

“Is that why I got emotions?” Keith asked, his blush fading. 

“That was probably because you were so close to the soul of the planet when she initiated it, actually,” Lance said.

“Wait,” Pidge piped up, “wouldn’t we have been closer to the heart of the planet down on the, you know, planet?”

Lance smiled sheepishly. “Actually, she’s right here.” He tapped his chest. 

There was a pause. Shiro blinked a few times, his confusion echoed in everyone else’s faces. Wasn’t Lance explaining things supposed to  _ explain  _ things, not raise more questions?

“Literally how?” 

“Well,” Lance wrapped his arm tighter around Gloxtov, “humans are mostly water, right? Vitzkug was dying because all her water was disappearing, but suddenly, here I come, a being of 60% water that’s already the perfect quintessence for her to survive. So she kinda boarded the ship before my feet had even touched the dirt. She didn’t bother to tell me until we formed the ice barrier, though.” 

“So  _ that’s  _ what that orange glow was,” Allura muttered to herself. Shiro cocked an eyebrow at her, but Lance paid no attention.

Lance looked down at Gloxtov. “That’s really the reason that Gloxtov’s been so clingy, really. Vitzkugian people were very in tune with the soul of their planet. She was practically gone while I was in the ice.” 

Gloxtov looked up, teary-eyed. There was a light in his eyes that caused a softening in Lance’s. “She missed you, too.”

Gloxtov gasped, purple tears spilling over and he buried himself into Lance’s chest with even more vigor. Shiro hadn’t even thought that it was possible.

“Does that mean that if you had successfully pulled off your plan and taken off to meet up with Keith that the planet would have died?” Hunk asked worry in his voice. 

Lance winced. “Actually, the planet’s been dead since before I got here. She didn’t have enough water to keep the whole thing alive, so she had to focus on just taking care of her only descendant still around.” Lance patted Gloxtov’s head again as the yellow alien’s ears fluffed up slightly. It surprised the rest of them, but Lance just laughed. 

“Okay…” Allura had her hand on her chin, her eyebrows scrunched up as she looked at the ceiling in thought. “So then we have to revive the planet.” She looked down at Lance, her face set. “We can do that, right?”

Lance nodded. “If we use all the frozen ice from the sky, we can replenish Vitzkug’s core.”

“What about all the ships up there?” Hunk looked down at Lance, tapping his fingers against each other. “There are still lots of innocent prisoners and Galra stuck, right? What are we going to do with them?”

Lance smiled, his face splitting into a grin of confidence. It was so much like his regular one that Shiro felt himself relaxing with just familiarity of it. “We’re going to rescue them, of course. Blue and I know just what to do. Assuming she’s calmed down.”

Lance cocked his head as if listening, before nodding. “She should be good.”

There was a beat of silence, and a feeling of warmth spreading over Shiro’s heart. They had a plan. They were all together, all ready to take on anything. He and Pidge weren’t worried about Matt and Sam anymore, and now they had even more people on their side. 

They could do this.

“Okay,” Matt spoke up, breaking the happy daze everyone had slipped into, “but why are they robotic  _ lions _ ? Are there lions in space?”

“That’s what  _ I’ve  _ been thinking!” was Pidge’s exasperated reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all liked this labor of love! The next three chapters or so should be done before the season 2 release. I'm off of school, and won't be going back until the 15th, so I should have all the time in the world to write and read. I'm excited! And I should be finishing this and all the subsequent ficlets I have planned by year's end. 
> 
> Stay tuned, and I'll see y'all next chapter! (Which should be much sooner than the recent ones!)


	17. A Sea of Dead Ships

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The obligatory catch up/fluff chapter. You're welcome.
> 
> Okay so I know it's been over a month since the last time I updated, but hear me out: I don't have an excuse. This chapter is hella long, and I wish I could say that that's the reason I didn't get it done until now but I literally wrote and proofed it all today lol. Basically the whole time I was writing I was thinking "Stop! Stop writing! This is a good place to stop!" and then I'd just keep going and well yeah. Here we are. 6k words in a single chapter. whoops.
> 
> I've not had anyone check it, so all errors are mine yadda yadda yadda here's the next chapter!

“Are you sure this is going to work?”

“It’ll be fine, Hunk,” Lance’s overconfident voice crackled over the speakers. “Blue and I got this. You guys just have to catch the ships.”

“Well, yeah, but I was more concerned about the whole ‘catching’ thing.”

Lance snorted. “You got this, dude. Yellow is  _ meant _ for catching. Plus, Shiro and Keith are there to help you.”

“She’s actually meant more for slamming into ships and taking lazer fire,” Hunk corrects. “But I see what you mean.”

Lance snorted again. “Just chill, dude.”

“You’ll be fine, Hunk,” Shiro’s voice chimed in. 

“I know that  _ I’ll  _ be fine,” Hunk said, maneuvering to look up to the giant ship that was slowly coming into view from within the ice. “I’m more worried about the prisoners that are currently trapped inside.”

“They’ll be fine, too,” Keith’s irritated voice joined the conversation. “Pidge and the others are going keep the Galra from attacking them, and we’re here to get it to the ground safely.”

“Speaking of,” Lance’s voice had lost it’s teasing quality, “Pidge, the Galra should be thawing right now.”

“Rodger,” Pidge responded. “Allura’s on it.”

“I’ve taken out about three now,” Allura added. “None of them are awake yet, but the sentries are coming online left and right. I thought you said they’d be broken forever?”

“Galra tech must be more durable than Blue expected,” Lance sighed. “I can pause the freezing if you need.”

“We can handle it,” Coran said. “I’ve not gotten to take out a Galra solider with my own two hands in a  _ long  _ time. It feels nice.”

“That’s a little creepy, Coran,” Hunk said.

“I think he’s just taking out his stress,” Shiro replied. “We’ve all been very anxious recently.”

“Try ‘forever,’” Pidge muttered.

“Same,” Lance added.

A soft silence settled over the coms, then. Hunk kept his eyes on the ship above, watching as huge drops of water dripped from the bottom of the icy sky. He could see Blue above him, firing an almost white pillar of light at the ice. It melted under the blast, deep droplets of water dripping to fall down on the ground far below. Hunk could see Lance shifting to chase the ice away from the base of the ship. 

In all honesty, Hunk wasn’t really  _ that _ worried. Sure, he was about to take on the job of carrying a giant warship where hundreds of prisoners and hundreds more Galra soldiers were currently sleeping, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be as worried as he would have been a year ago. After all, he finally had all of his friends back. He’d been with Shiro and Pidge for months now, which had been great, but now here he was, flying alongside Keith and Shiro while Pidge and Coran and Allura beat down bad guys and freed prisoners inside the ship that Lance was currently freeing. 

Oh yeah, Hunk was super excited that Lance was okay. He loved all his fellow paladins dearly, and he would do anything to protect them, but he and Lance went way back. Not to mention, he was the other leg. Hunk didn’t support the whole team on his own, not when Lance was around. They worked together, and they hugged and snuggled and made sure each other was okay even while they were taking care of the rest of the team. It was nice.

“This is taking too long.”

“Keith,” Lance grumbled, “we want the people on board to  _ survive  _ the thawing process.”

“I could still go and thaw another ship,” Keith huffed.

“Then Hunk and I would have to catch two ships,” Shiro laughed softly. Hunk was glad to hear his tone so light after so long. “Just wait for Lance to thaw them. It’s not taking nearly as long as you think it is.”

Keith grunted and Hunk could practically  _ feel  _ Keith crossing his arms. 

“Prisoners are starting to thaw,” Pidge updated. “Dad and Matt are talking to them now. We think most of the Galra have been taken care of.”

“Thanks for the update, Pidge,” Shiro replied. 

“Get ready, guys,” Lance spoke up. “The ship is almost free.”

Hunk looked up to see that there was only a few more patches of ice around the edges keeping the ship in place. He felt his anxiety spike. Okay so maybe he  _ was  _ that worried.

“Got it,” Shiro said. “Hunk, get in place.”

“On it.” Hunk nudged Yellow into motion. He flew parallel with Shiro, before moving to take place on opposite ends of the ship. There was a deep thunking sound as the top of Yellow connected with the bottom of the ship.

“Firing thrusters,” Pidge said. Hunk saw the light flare from near the middle.

“Coming free in 5,” Lance’s voice caused Hunk’s anxiety to spike. “4.”

_ Calm down, _ Yellow’s mind brushed against Hunk’s.  _ You and I can handle this, just as Black Pilot and Black can.  _

_ I’m worried about jostling the prisoners, Allura, Coran, and Pidge and her family,  _ Hunk replied.  _ I don’t want to hurt them _ .

_ You won’t _ .

Hunk felt a surge of assurance flood his mind. Hunk sighed, feeling himself relax, even if only slightly. Being able to talk to his lion was great.

“2,” Lance continued. “1. Dropping.”

There was a loud groaning as the ice became weak enough for the ship’s weight to break through. Hunk fired his thrusters to help soften the fall, but there was still a feeling of the ship dropping slightly. Hunk groaned as he fired harder, trying to keep the ship from falling completely, and wishing Pidge had more working thrusters help keep them from crashing down. He watched as large shards of ice fell down below, and he worried about the aliens and Castle on the ground.

“Keith, we need you,” Shiro grunted.

Hunk looked up to see Red flying to take a place near the middle of the ship. Red placed her back against the hull and fire lit at the tip of her paws. Moving the ship became slightly easier. 

“Okay,” Shiro spoke up. “Start going down.”

Hunk shifted, letting the ship come down on him a little bit. They started moving down, but it became harder and harder to keep it in the air.

“Pidge, can you get us more power on the thrusters?” 

“I’ve got them maxed out, Shiro,” Pidge sounded tense. “The ice damaged the engines more than anticipated.”

“I’m coming in,” Lance said. Hunk watched as sparkles of blue lit at his lion’s paws as Blue came closer. “I can help you at least get close to the ground.”

“You best hurry,” Allura’s tense voice came over coms. “Not all the prisoners are completely unfrozen.”

“Don’t jostle,” Hunk grit his teeth. “Got it.”

There was a slight ease as Lance came near Keith and began assisting. They made their way slowly towards the ground, the lions keeping the fragile ship from shattering on the dusty plains below. 

“We’re close enough I need to make the ramp,” Lance said. Hunk saw Blue lash her tail with his words.

“Alright,” Shiro replied. Lance moved off and Hunk had to fire his thrusters harder. “Allura, are the prisoners braced?”

“They’re as ready as they can be,” was her tense response.

“Creating ice ramp now,” Lance said. Hunk saw a flash of light out of the corner of his eye and the ground they were headed towards changed from sandy yellow to icy white. Blue then shot up to the front of the ship. “I’ve got the front.”

“Here we go,” Shiro said. Hunk steeled himself.

There was a shock as the bottom of the front of the ship connected with the ice ramp. Hunk watched Black spring out of the way as the ship began it’s descent down the ramp. Shiro joined Lance at the front of the ship, trying to keep the warship from gaining too much speed. 

Next Keith peeled off, and suddenly Hunk was face-to-face with a wall of ice. He swallowed, trying to trust himself and his lion to carry the weight of the ship that wasn’t already on the ramp. He had battled his way through so many fleets of Galra warships that surely he was capable of this. 

Hunk pulled back, allowing the last of the metal to scrape off the top of his lion onto the ice ramp, the beginnings of which was only a few feet from Yellow’s nose. Pride reverberated up his spine as he felt Yellow sending congratulatory emotions his way. Hunk smiled before taking off to see how the others were doing with stopping the ship.

Turns out he shouldn’t have worried, since the ship had already slowed to a slight crawl. It stopped completely as Hunk made his way towards the front of the purple mass. 

“Great work, team,” Shiro panted. “Allura, how are the prisoners?”

“Considering the circumstances,” Allura’s voice was bright, “I think they’re the best they can be.”

“Good to hear.”

Hunk smiled. They had saved more people. They had done their jobs as paladins of Voltron. Then Hunk’s happiness faded slightly.

“Lance?”

“Yeah buddy?”

“How many ships are there up in the sky.”

“About 500. Why?”

A groan escaped Hunk’s throat, and he was little embarrassed until he realized that the others had groaned at the same time.

“This is going to take  _ forever _ ,” Keith hissed.

“Yes,” Shiro’s stern voice took command, however even he had an undertone of annoyance, “but it’s necessary. We need to rescue these people. They deserve to be free.”

There was a soft silence as they accepted Shiro’s sentiment. After all, not one of them didn’t agree with him. Hunk set Yellow down in the sand, watching quietly as Lance landed Blue and bent her down to collect Pidge, Allura, and Matt. Sam and Coran were tasked with getting the prisoners into the various stasis pods they had in the Castle of Lions.

Yeah, getting the Castle down to planet hadn’t been fun, either. First, Lance had to force the ice to cover the huge structure, and move some ships around, before they had started removing the castle from the ice. Since the Castle had been at the top, they couldn’t fire thrusters until they were through the ice. This meant that Keith and Lance had to melt through the ice slowly from the inside while Hunk, Shiro, and Pidge had to keep the huge structure from squashing them.

Definitely not fun. 

“I’ve got them,” Lance’s voice startled them all out of their break.

“Alright, team,” Shiro’s weary voice filled Hunk with dread about the coming hours. “Let’s get the next one.”

The lions took off for the sky again, but not without a little bit of groaning from everyone.

* * *

 

“I literally cannot feel my butt.”

“Thank you for that information, Hunk,” Pidge’s tired voice responded over coms, “but at least you haven’t been running and fighting half frozen soldiers all day.”

“I’ve been  _ sitting  _ all day,” Hunk huffed back. “Moving these ships is hard. I’m getting tired.”

“We’re all getting tired,” Shiro cut in, stopping any arguments before they started. “Lance, how many ships are there left?”

“We’ve cleared about half of them.” Lance sounded really tired, too. “So about 250 are still stuck.”

“If you guys are thinking of stopping for the day, I would suggest doing so,” Coran said. “All our pods are full, and we’re having difficulty taking care of the people we’ve freed so far.”

“Alright,” Shiro sighed. “Let’s finish the rest tomorrow.”

Hunk landed Yellow with a tired grunt. As he unbuckled from his seat he saw Blue land shakily and come to a rest on her side.

“You okay, Lance?” Hunk asked.

“I’m fine,” Lance grunted. “Blue’s just  _ really  _ tired.”

Hunk felt Yellow humming in agreement. Before Hunk could do anything, her great body shifted and she curled up in the sand. Hunk chuckled softly, feeling her purr with contentment.

“Yellow is, too.” 

He heard Lance laugh at that, and a little bit of his weariness faded away. God, he’d missed his friend. 

“Everyone head back to the Castle,” Shiro ordered. “We’ll take shifts to look after the refugees.”

There were sounds of consent as Hunk exited his lion. Yellow opened her giant maw to allow Hunk out into the sunlight. He stretched, feeling the blood return to forgotten muscles as he picked his way around Yellow’s paws.

“So,” Lance’s arm was suddenly around Hunk’s shoulder, his voice bright and eyes shining despite his weariness, “you can talk to your lion now, huh?”

Hunk smiled. “Yeah. Not nearly as far, though.”

“Psshh.” Lance waved his hand. “Getting talk outside of the cockpit is the hard part. Range just comes with time.”

Hunk’s smile widened. “You think so?”

“I know so.” Lance looked Hunk in the eye and Hunk felt pure happiness fill his heart. “After all, you’re the best pilot here besides me and Shiro.”

God he had missed his best friend.

“I feel like those numbers are a little off,” Hunk teased. 

“No, I did lots of testing and ran a few numbers.” Lance smirked. “Definitely. Order of best pilots is me, Shiro, you, Pidge, Allura, Coran, and then Keith.”

“Allura and Coran are above Keith even though they don’t fly?”

“Well duh! They have to fly the Castle, which I would think is a lot harder.”

“Wouldn’t that make them better than you?”

“Oh no,” Lance waved his hand again. “They’ve got no  _ finesse _ . You gotta have style to be a good pilot.”

Hunk snorted. “Okay, Lance.”

Lance beamed at him. He seemed to be enjoying Hunk’s company just as much. 

They entered the Castle, Lance still with his arm around Hunk and laughing the whole way. Then they made it up to the med room, they were the last ones there.

“Alright,” Shiro started once he noticed they were there, “let’s set up a game plan.”

“There are about two hundred refugees who need to use the med pods,” Allura said. “We need at least three people to watch all the pods to make sure they aren’t going to hurt themselves when they wake up.” She waved her arms and a holoscreen appeared before her. 

“We already have an ordered list of who needs to use the pods most urgently. We used pictures since a lot of their names don’t transfer to phonetic alphabets very well. Also, none of you can read Altean. Coran and Sam have been working for the entire day, so I say they’re off duty until tomorrow since they’ll be pulling another very long shift.”

Coran looked like he was going to protest but Allura hit him with a glare and he conceded.

“We’ll set up shifts so that three people are present at all time, with one person transferring out at a time. So, who wants to be the first one to join in the shift?”

“I will,” Shiro said. 

Allura nodded. “Who wants to relieve Dr. Holt?”

“It’s find if you call me Sam, really.”

“Alright, who wants to relieve Sam?”

“I will,” Lance said. 

Allura paused, confused.

Lance cocked an eyebrow. “What? If I go now, then when I go to bed I won’t have to wake up and can just crash until later. Inertia.”

“A fair point, I suppose.” Hunk could feel Allura holding back a smile. “Who would want to come a relieve Coran?”

Hunk raised his hand. They continued, Allura relieving Shiro, Keith relieving Lance, and finally Pidge taking Hunk’s place. The rotations were going to be long enough that after Pidge’s time was up they would be ready for the coming day. Allura and Keith were going to have the longest haul, after Sam and Coran, but they both said they were fine with it. Matt tried to get a shift but no one would let him. 

After the schedule was decided all the Paladins scattered to do various things. Allura said that she needed to talk to the healthy refugees and see if any of them would be willing to help free the ones still stuck in the ice. Borp, Kyrztak, and Gloxtov had been taking care of them majority of the day, and she wanted to see how they were doing. 

Pidge and Matt both headed towards Green’s hangar, the crazy light in Pidge’s eyes told Hunk that he wanted to be as far from the hangar as possible, especially when Matt’s eyes showed a similar light. Hunk was sure that once Sam had been relieved of duty they would all probably crash. 

Lance, Keith, and Hunk all headed towards the kitchen, the grumbling in their stomachs protesting that they had waiting this long. Hunk promised Shiro, Sam, and Coran that they would bring some food for them and the younger Holts before too long before they left. 

When they reached the kitchen, Hunk began rustling about, gathering his spices and pots and pans so he could make the best meal possible with what he had. It was their first meal after all their work and he wanted to make it special. He made sure to grab more than necessary so that he could make enough for everyone. He would have to ask the refugees to figure out what they ate before he made food for them, however. 

Keith and Lance parked themselves at the counter, watching Hunk rustle about. They said that they’d stay out of his way unless he needed their help, but Hunk was just glad to have them there. And that they were in the kitchen. He had really missed cooked food. 

“So,” Keith started suddenly, surprising Lance and Hunk, “did Vitzkug tell you anything else?”

Lance cocked an eyebrow. “Why? It’s not like it really matters in the grand scheme of things.”

Keith blushed slightly. “I dunno. I just figured it’d be something for you to talk about I guess?”

Lance grinned. “Awwwwww. You missed me, didn’t you Keithy.”

Keith blushed harder. “No!”

“Can’t escape now, dude,” Hunk chuckled. “You blushed. That’s like blood in the water for Lance.”

“Damn right it is!” Lance grinned widely. He put both his hands over his heart, feigning teary eyes. “It warms my heart that you missed me, Keithy.”

“Shut it.” Keith lightly shoved Lance. “I did not. Who would miss your annoying voice and dumb jokes and stupid face.”

Hunk paused. “That was too long a list there, buddy.”

“Aw, you think my face is stupid.” Lance bat his eyelashes jokingly. Keith blushed even harder and slammed his face into the counter, covering his head with his hands.

Lance laughed loudly, all acting falling away. He pushed against Keith’s back playfully as cackles filled the air. Keith peeked out from under his hands, a small smile on his lips. 

When Lance’s cackles died down, he wiped away a tear from his eyes. He leaned down on the counter, resting his head on his arms and smiling at Keith.

“I missed you, too.”

Hunk didn’t think it was possible that Keith could become redder than he already was, but life is full of surprises. 

“So,” Hunk tried to give Keith some time to recover, “you could see everything on the planet, right?”

Lance sat up, his smile fading slightly. “Yeah.”

“So you could see Gloxtov and the others over the past few months?”

Lance winced, then looked down. “Yeah…”

Hunk stopped stirring for a moment. “You okay?”

Lance set his head in his hands, his expression tired again. Keith sat up, worry replacing the red on his face.

“It’s just…” Lance looked away from Hunk’s face. “They thought I abandoned them. I was right there, trying to help them anyway I could, but they thought that even  _ I  _ had hurt them. It was...painful.”

“I’m sorry,” Hunk said.

“I’m sure they don’t think that anymore,” Keith said.

Lance shook his head. “It didn’t hurt that they didn’t trust  _ me _ ,” Lance said, eyes distant. “It hurt watching them accept that they were going to die. They just gave up, guys. That’s how messed up they were.” Lance glanced towards the door. “That’s how messed up Pidge’s family and Shiro are.”

Hunk and Keith’s eyes widened. They looked at each other, before Keith spoke up. 

“But Shiro and the Holt’s were only prisoners for a little over a year. Borp and the others were prisoners for decades.”

“Yeah,” Lance didn’t seem convinced, “but they were in that state without Galra on their backs. I made sure of that. Shiro’s been fighting them, and I’m sure Sam and Matt will be, too.”

“What do you mean, you made sure that there weren’t any Galra?” Hunk asked, worry spiking.

Lance finally looked away from the door, mild surprise in his gaze. “You didn’t think that the Galra just left this planet alone, did you? There were hundreds of prisoners and soldiers in those ships. That’s a lot of resources. They wouldn’t just let that go.”

Keith furrowed his brow. “There weren’t any Galra anywhere near here when we came.”

“I assume they’re going to argue their case with Zarkon to get reinforcements. They left about four days ago. I’m not sure how fast the Galra government works, but they should be back before too long.”

Keith stood. “We have to tell Shiro and Allura. They need to—”

Lance grabbed his arm, keeping him from leaving. “Calm down, mullet. It’s fine. The ice barrier is weaker, but we left the outer layers intact for a reason. Vitzug has an idea, but we need to run it by the refugees first.” 

Keith looked skeptical, but he sat down. 

“Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been in Survival Mode for the past three months.” Lance’s eyes shone a little brighter. “I need something besides the Galra and refugees to think about.” 

Lance turned to Keith, his face suddenly serious.

“Do you  _ ever _ cut your hair?”

Keith groaned, faceplanting into the counter. Hunk chuckled, turning back to his cooking. The sounds of Keith and Lance bickering made for nice background noise while he cooked.

Hunk felt happiness flood him again. It just felt so  _ normal _ . Well, as normal as living in a giant castle and fighting off a space dictator could feel. Hunk glanced over his shoulder to see Keith turn his back to Lance, his arms crossed, but a small smile on his face. 

The space family was back together. None of them were hurt, none of them were alone, none of them were upset or sad. They had even gained a few members, thanks to Lance’s rescue.

There was still something that bothered Hunk though. 

“Lance?” Hunk turned back to see Lance’s hand gripping Keith’s hair and Keith’s fingers in Lance’s mouth. Hunk didn’t want to know how that had happened. “Why were you outside your lion?”

Lance spit Keith’s hand out, releasing his grip on the other boy’s hair so he could escape. “Oh, that was because I had a totally rad plan to help—”

“Lance!”

Lance barely had enough time to turn his head before something big, blue, and furry slammed into him. Lance squacked as he fell out of the chair, Keith scrambling to get out of the way of the giant fin that followed the body.

“Jagis! Do not be so rough!” Hunk saw a smaller green alien standing in the doorway, panting. 

Allura sprinted up after the green one. She wasn’t panting.

“You are unhurt!” The blue alien screeched, holding Lance with all five appendages and rolling around on the floor.

“What’s going on?” Allura asked.

“Wait.” Hunk’s memories clicked. “You’re Flinx, right? And that’s Jagis?” He pointed at the green alien, who nodded.

“Who?” Allura asked, confused. “And why is Lance currently being mauled?”

Hunk just shrugged in response. Jagis rolled a little more and Lance’s vibrant laughter suddenly became audible. Hunk was wondering how Lance had survived without breathing. 

The sushi roll of blue fur and blue paladin rolled until Lance was on top. He then stuck his legs and arms out so that they stopped rolling. His hair was a mess, but his eyes were alight and smile almost went from ear to ear. 

“You two are out! I hadn’t realized we unfroze your ship!”

Flinx’s face broke into a smile, too. He then launched himself at Lance and all three were rolling again. 

Keith had completely stopped moving the poor boy was so confused. He looked up at Allura, questions on his face.

Allura shrugged. “I went in to relay the situation to the refugees and they just took off running. I didn’t know what they were doing, so I followed them. I’m not quite sure how they found Lance in this huge castle.”

“Echolocation, right?” Hunk brought up Lance’s story. “He said they could do that. Maybe it’s really advanced?”

They watched Lance roll around with the balls of fur for a few minutes before Lance started coughing and they broke apart almost instantly. Jagis and Flinx both sat up, worry on their faces while Lance tried to catch his breath.

Lance waved them off. “I’m good,” he said when the coughing had died down. “I just swallowed a bunch of fur.”

Jagis and Flinx both hesitated, but when Lance got to his feet they followed. 

“Okay, so introductions.” Lance coughed one more time before looking up.

“This is Flinx, and his sister Jagis. They were the ones from Flumnis that I told you about. They helped a lot with finding Matt and Sam.” 

Flinx and Jagis both waved, suddenly shy.

“This is Hunk, the Yellow Paladin, Keith, the Red Paladin, and Princess Allura, who owns this Castle.” Lance pointed to each person in turn. 

Allura smiled and extended her hand. “Thank you so much for taking care of Lance while we all were separated. From what he told us, we owe you his life.”

Flinx laughed and shook her hand. “And we ours. Thank you for taking care of us in this castle, and for saving all of us.”

Keith cocked an eyebrow at Lance. Lance just shrugged, mouthing ‘space royalty’ in response. 

“It’s no problem, really,” Allura continued. “I need to get back to the other refugees. You can come with me or remain here.”

“We’ll stick with Lance for a bit, if that is alright,” Jagis replied nervously. 

“Of course. If you need anything, let Lance or anyone on Team Voltron know.” Allura turned with a smile, and exited the kitchen.

There was a beat of silence before Flinx elbowed Lance in the side, eyes twinkling.

“Honestly I do not know how you humans survive. Your bodies are so fragile yet you do such impossible things. You must have  _ shetha _ at your side at all times.”

Lance laughed but Keith cocked an eyebrow. “Shetha?”

“Luck, basically,” Lance explained, ruffling Flinx’s head. “And you’re one to talk! Pidge is the only human smaller than you!”

“Yes but you have no muscle.” Jagis poked Lance’s side. Lance giggled, and she did it again.

“Stop! That tickles!”

“I do not know what ‘tickles’ are.” Jagis kept poking Lance.

“You’re a dirty liar!” Lance cackled as Flinx joined in. “One of the first things you told me was that your tail was ticklish!”

Jagis grinned and soon Lance was on the floor crying with laughter.

“Keith! Hunk!” Lance cackled. “Help!”

“Oh no, buddy,” Hunk continued cooking, thankful that nothing had burned yet. “I don’t want to get in the middle of a tickle fight. Those get  _ deadly _ .”

“I’m not even sure where they’re ticklish,” Keith shrugged. “You’re on your own.”

“Noooooo,” Lance wailed, cackles still wracking his body. “Keeeeeeeeith!”

“Nope. Not helping.”

Suddenly Lance’s hand shot out, grabbing Keith’s ankle. Keith squeaked as Lance dragged him off the chair. 

“If you’re not going to help me you’re going to  _ die _ with me!”

Keith looked him dead in the eyes. “I’m not ticklish.”

Jagis and Flinx stopped, letting Lance breathe. 

“That’s not fair!” Lance coughed.

“No one is impervious to Flumian tickles,” Flinx said without a hint of a joke.

Keith’s eyes widened as they dragged him into the tickle pile, Lance now on the tickler side. Keith screeched.

So it had been a bluff. Hunk tried not to laugh.

“No, seriously. Stop!” Keith cried. 

They all stopped, slightly out of breath. Lance looked down, worried he’d gone too far.

Keith scrambled away, putting as much distance between his body and their hands. He was panting slightly.

“No more tickles,” he huffed.

“You okay?” Lance inched slightly closer.

Keith had apparently been waiting for that because he tackled Lance. In a few seconds he had Lance pinned. 

“I don’t like being tickled.”

“That’s understandable.”

“Don’t do it again.”

“Okay.”

Keith smiled as they took stock of their position. “I won.”

Lance’s eyes blew wide. “Did not!”

Keith sat back. “Totally did.”

“I was making sure you weren’t going to, like, hate me!”

Keith smirked. “So you  _ do  _ care.”

Lance turned bright red.

Of course Keith would go for revenge.

* * *

 

After the Tickle Tournament, Lance, Keith, and the Flumnians helped Hunk finish up dinner and deliver it to the others. After a while, Lance split off to check on the refugees, taking Flinx and Jagis with him. They had promised to get their orders for the kitchen and deliver them. 

Hunk had expected Keith to take off to the training room, but he stayed in the kitchen, helping Hunk where he could. 

“So pour it in here?” 

Hunk glanced up, seeing Keith holding a pot near the thing that was very similar to an oven.

“Yeah,” Hunk nodded, continuing to mix the ingredients he had. “Just make sure to pour it in slowly. You don’t want the hot water to splash up and burn you.”

Keith nodded. Delicately, he lifted the pot and poured the purple chunks into the steaming water. Barely anything splashed out, and Hunk smiled.

“I was kinda expecting you to be worse in the kitchen.”

Keith started, then looked over at Hunk. “Why?”

Hunk shrugged. “I dunno. You just don’t seem the kind to cook.”

“I’m not, really.” Keith picked up a spoonish utensil. “Stir this?”

Hunk nodded.

“But I know my way around a kitchen,” Keith continued. “I lived in the desert for a year alone. I had to survive somehow.”

“Good point.”

They fell back into easy silence that was only broken by the sounds of cooking and Keith’s occasional questions.

“I wasn’t really expecting him to be okay,” Keith said after a while.

Hunk stopped spreading the orange paste and looked over. “Who?”

“Lance.” Keith didn’t look at Hunk and kept stirring. “He was alone for a long time. He was trapped in ice and forced to watch people give up on living. I wasn’t expecting him to be as okay as he is.” He stopped stirring, his voice quieter. “He really is amazing.”

Hunk studied him for a second before turning back to his work.

“He’s not really okay.”

Keith looked up, surprised. Hunk glanced back over. 

“He’s pretty good at compartmentalizing,” Hunk explained. “He knows when to let his emotions run wild and when to push them to the back. He’s probably freaking out inside, but he knows that letting us know will probably freak us out, too.”

Keith dropped the spoon and started heading for the door. Hunk caught his arm. When Keith looked at him Hunk shook his head.

“I can’t let him just suffer like that!” Keith said, trying to pull away.

“It won’t do you any good,” Hunk reasoned. “He’s not the best at engineering or flying or fighting, but Lance sure knows how people work. I think he’s probably the best with handling his emotions out of all of us.”

Keith opened his mouth to protest but Hunk cut him off.

“Remember back on Arus when we had that party before the bomb went off? Remember how Lance started talking about home and then excused himself? Coran said that he had gone up to the control room and they had talked it out until just before the bomb went off. Lance excused himself from the conversation so it wouldn't bring us down, but he didn’t deny help when Coran came to talk.  _ I  _ probably wouldn’t have been able to do that.”

“But I could be like Coran, right?” Keith asked. “Go talk to him and help him out.”

Hunk let go of his arm and shook his head.

“Flinx and Jagis are all over him. Plus, he’s going to be going on pod duty before too long. Right now, he’s not only pretending to be happy for our sakes, but for the refugees. If he acts happy, it’s easier for us to act happy, and it makes the refugees feel a little better about the situation. It makes them more relaxed. Lance won’t talk about his worries around the refugees, and especially not around Flinx and Jagis, who just recently lost their whole species.”

Keith paused to think for a second. “Then what do we do?”

“We wait.” Hunk turned back to cooking, watching Keith. “He’ll come to us when he thinks the time’s right, or if he can’t handle it anymore. At the very least, he’ll come to me. He knows that being emotionally compromised will only hinder the team.” Hunk gave Keith a meaningful look.

Keith squirmed a little. “How do we know he’ll talk to us at all? Or that waiting won’t just make it worse?”

“I would talk to him sooner, but he’s  _ way  _ better at telling when it’s safe to express emotions.” Hunk shrugged. “I’m not bad with emotions at all, but Lance is crazy good at it. Probably has something to do with having so many siblings.”

Keith stood there for a few minutes more.

Hunk sighed. “Just trust him, okay? I mean, he’s a leg, too.”

Keith thought for a second then nodded. “Fine. But if he waits more than a week I  _ will  _ corner him.”

Hunk smiled. “I’d expect nothing less.”

* * *

 

Hunk was tired, and he hadn’t even started his shift yet. 

After a while, Keith’s stirring had gotten sluggish so Hunk had sent him to bed. He had one of the longer shifts, after all. Hunk had finished the food for all the aliens about an hour ago, and had just been sitting in the lounge resting his feet since. He’d never had to feed that many people before. Coran should be coming by any minute to tell Hunk it was time for his shift.

Hunk laid on the couch, his feet and back sore from sitting, and then standing, for too long. At least they’d have all the aliens freed tomorrow. Then Hunk could hopefully recuperate and relax. He was already looking forward to sleeping tonight.

“Hunk?” 

Coran’s tired voice caused Hunk to open his eyes.

Corna looked tired. His moustache was drooping, and strands of hair were sticking out at irregular angles about his head. Blue patches that resembled bags circled his eyes, and he was stooping in a way Hunk had never seen.

Hunk scrambled to his feet.

“You okay, Coran?”

“I’m fine.” Coran tried to wave him off, but even that was devoid of energy. “I’ll be peachy once I check on the refugees.”

“Uh, no.” Hunk put his hand on Coran’s shoulder. “You’re going to bed.”

Coran looked like he was going to object, but he closed his mouth and let his head fall slightly, muttering something about paladins being keener than they used to be before walking slowly off towards his room. 

Hunk watched him go before he started heading towards the med room. When he got there, sick aliens sat about everywhere, Shiro and Lance meandering about them and pressing stuff that looked sort of like bandages and ice packs to their bodies. Shiro looked up when Hunk walked in, but Lance kept talking to a squid-like creature, a tired smile on his face.

“I’m glad you’re here, Hunk.” Shiro had walked over to where Hunk was. “Coran looked like he was going to keel over any second.”

“He just about did when he got me,” Hunk replied. “I think we should send someone to check the hallways to make sure he made it.”

“I’ll check on him when I get a moment.” Shiro gave him a tired smile. “Well, I guess I should explain what’s going on.”

“That would probably be most effective, yes.”

Shiro showed him how the pods worked, and how they were on fast-track healing so that the next alien could be put in sooner. He showed them how they were doing first aid where they could so the refugees could survive until the pod. 

As he was explaining, a pod slid open. Hunk watched as Lance jumped up to keep the creature (it looked kind of like a green orca with legs) from falling over, and telling it something. As Lance led the alien down the hall towards the lounges where they were hosting the rest of the refugees, Shiro showed Hunk how to pull up the list of aliens and they got the next guy (turns out it was the squid Lance had been talking to earlier) into the pod. Shiro showed him how to adjust the pod for various aliens, then they started wandering among the refugees, tending to what they could.

Lance came back after a bit, bringing another alien into the room. Hunk recognized them from being lower on the list. Lance set the alien down before coming over to Hunk.

“So how did Shiro sleep those months when you guys were out there?” Lance said at a volume only Hunk could hear.

Hunk looked up at Shiro, who was kneeling next to a large purple alien and handing them a cup of Coran’s weird space tea. “Not the best. But I think it’s about the same as it was during his stay at the castle.” Hunk eyed Lance. “Why.”

“He just looks really tired.” Lance didn’t look away from Shiro.

“ _ Everyone _ looks tired,” Hunk said. “Why are you worried about Shiro?”

Lance gave Hunk a look. “I mean, he’s got pretty severe PTSD. I was worried that he was having a hard time while he was alone.”

Hunk looked back up at Shiro. He’d figured that Shiro had problems since he’d been captured, but he’d not thought that Shiro’s PTSD was severe. “What makes you think it’s so bad?”

Lance gave him the stink eye. “He’s had numerous flashbacks during fights, including the training room, as well as hardly sleeps, and when he does they’re pretty much solid nightmares. He can’t remember majority of the time from his capture and doesn’t ask for help for any of it, probably because he’s the ‘leader’ and thinks if he shows weakness we won’t follow him or he just straight up doesn’t want to talk about it. Not to mention he ejected Sendak into  _ space  _ because he was having some sort of flashback or something.”

“That was a...long list.” Hunk suddenly felt kinda bad. How had he not noticed?

Then again, it had been Lance who noticed, so maybe he wasn’t so far behind the others.

“Needless to say, I’m worried,” Lance continued. “I just wanted to make sure he didn’t like go off the deepend or something. I tried to tell Vitzkug not to show Shiro any negative memories, but she said it was necessary. I’m not quite sure  _ why _ , but whatever.”

Hunk looked down at Lance. “You sure pay attention to people, don’t you?”

Lance snorted. “Well yeah. It’s not like there’s anything else for me to understand on the ship.” Lance glanced up. “Hang on. That purple guy looks like he’s gonna pass out. Brb.”

Hunk shook his head. Did Lance actually just say ‘brb’ outloud? He was rediculous. 

Hunk watched Shiro. Now that he was looking for it, he saw the stress in the shoulders and the weariness in his face. He would have to watch him more, too. He didn’t think that bringing up Shiro’s problems to Allura would go very well. Allura meant well but she tended to be very confrontational about problems. So it was up to Lance and Hunk to make sure that the head of Voltron didn’t go crazy. More Lance than him, however. Lance would catch it way before Hunk ever could.

God, he had missed Lance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, not much happens story-wise in this chapter. We've officially reached the falling motion at the end of the story. The chapter number is real this time I swear. I hope to post one chapter a week from here to the end, so we'll see how that goes. 
> 
> Lance is smart, okay? I noticed that he tends to mention stuff about people's intentions and emotions, like "this ship's just following? what do they want? not to kill us?", and the examples provided helped sell me on it, but damn, at the end of the scene in Crystal Venom where Shiro ejects Sendak into space, there's a split second after Shiro says something about not being able to trust this Completely Unconcious Alien where they show everyone's faces and all the paladins have a look of shock execpt Lance (and Coran, whose face is neutral and I think that's because he's an alien and doesn't realize this is high-key not normal) who has already started to try to help Shiro get a grip on reality and realize that it didn't happen and like, in that scene Lance switches pretty quickly from "I almost died twice it's worse than yours!" to "the castle has been screwing with us all and we all understand" which is literally less than a minute of screentime away for him and the wording of "we all" sounds like he's trying to get Shiro to understand that they are all here together and he should totes talk to someone about it and I just...
> 
> Sorry, I'm rambling again, lol. I just get really upset when people say my son isn't smart. I have more examples but I already wrote a lot whoops. Basically this chapter is pandering to me. I think Keith and Lance are equal intelligence wise, just in different things.
> 
> Also I know I used "god, he missed his friend" a lot but Hunk missed Lance, dammit. He was Worried.
> 
> Anyway, sorry for that, but I should be having the next chapter out by the end of next week, but don't hold your breath. 
> 
> See you next chapter!


	18. Desert Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Told you I'd get one in each week lol. 
> 
> So, I've been pretty sporadic with what I'm writing recently, huh? I mean, I posted two parts of what were supposed to be one shots at one am yesterday, and then a second part of one of them later that day, and here I am, posting the second to last chapter of this monster. So, literally all three of my unfinished chaptered fics are only one chapter from being completed. I knew I hated endings, but this ridiculous. 
> 
> Anyway, I wrote this whole thing today, and since I'm too impatient to wait for one of my betas to check it, I'm gonna go ahead and post it. So, sorry for the mistakes, because I'm sure you'll catch some. 
> 
> Let's go, round 18!

It had taken another day and a half for all of the ships to be taken down and the prisoners freed. Coran could feel weariness hanging heavily on his bones. He was glad for the nights when the paladins would take over. 

But, finally, they had gotten all the prisoners out and all those who needed the pods had been treated. The refugees weren’t healthy, per say, but they would live. Coran let himself, even if only a little.

The next big problem to tackle was where they were going to host the group meeting.

“Listen,” Lance said, eye twitching. “I only wanna explain this once. That’s why we need to have everybody in one room. We already have a room big enough!”

“There are over eight hundred refugees, Lance,” Shiro sighed. “We can’t fit all of them in the Entry Hall.”

“What about everybody in a bunch of rooms and we relay it through screens?” Hunk put in.

Lance shook his head. “No, that’s too impersonal. I dunno if screens will show the magic.”

Everyone cocked an eyebrow at that. 

“Magic?” Keith seemed skeptical.

“Why don’t you just tell us what you’re going to do, Lance?” Pidge said. “Why do you have to make everything to difficult?”

“I like making things interesting, okay?” Lance crossed his arms and turned slightly away from the group. “Plus, Vitzkug wants it to be a surprise.”

“Let’s just put them outside, Lance.” Allura massaged her temples. “We can talk to them there.”

Lance’s eyes shone. “Great idea, Allura! Let’s start moving now!”

Lance bounded off and the others followed with only mild groaning.

“Why’s he so excited?” Keith grumbled.

“He’s probably just happy that everyone’s okay,” Coran smiled. “After all, if we hadn’t gone through all this time to free the prisoners, they probably would have died. That’s something to be happy about, isn’t it?” 

Keith ducked his head. “Yeah.” He looked up at Lance’s retreating back. “I guess it is.”

It took about two earth hours for them to gather all the refugees outside the castle. Even though they had healed all of the life-threatening injuries, they were still tired. Lots of refugees had to be carried out by either paladins or other refugees. Finally, they were all situated outside, and Allura took her place on the slightly raised platform they had created.

“Attention, all.” Allura’s commanding voice stopped all the chatter from the refugees. “We have arranged this meeting because we wish to include you in the formation of our plans, since they influence your lives.”

“For any of you who wish to return to your planets, we can help you return home,” Shiro said from beside her. “However, we are aware that many of you have no home to return to.”

“The planet you’ve been forced to mine used to be alive,” Lance said, stepping forward. “Currently, the planet is dead, but we can revive her. We know that this planet is very close to the heart of the Galra Empire, and that may be very scary for you, but Vitzkug is willing to protect you until Zarkon falls.”

“How can a planet protect us?” one of the refugees asked. “Not even a Balmera can survive an attack from the Galra!”

Murmurs began spreading over the crowd, unease washing over all of them.

“Vitzkug isn’t like a Balmera,” Lance explained, pulling them all back. “She lives in the water, and she has always sheltered those who live on her from harm for centuries.”

“But she was taken over, wasn’t she?” the refugee countered.

“Yes,” Lance replied, voice steady. “However, the Galra have already mined everything from this planet. They have no need to come back. They believe this planet to be dead. We want them to keep thinking that.”

“Wouldn’t they see us on the surface?” another refugee asked. “Wouldn’t they check up on a world that was held captive by Voltron?”

“If you were on the surface, yes.” Lance smiled. “Vitzkug has an idea, and she wants to share it with you all. But she only can if you let her.”

“I thought you said she was dead?” another spoke up. “How can you know what she wants?”

“The planet is dead, yes.” Coran was surprised to see Gloxtov climb onto the platform to stand next to Lance, his voice loud and clear. “However, her spirit lives in the water. Lance is currently her host.”

“How?”

Lance shrugged. “Human’s are mostly water.”

“I have lived on Vitzkug my whole life,” Gloxtov continued. “She sheltered us, but my people were destroyed because we came out to greet those who landed here. The capture of Vitzkug was not her fault, but ours.”

“If they think that Vitzkug is already dead, they will only search her surface,” Lance said. 

“So we would live within the planet?”

“Yes.” Lance moved his hands up, cupping them around the center of his chest. “Just like she strengthened the ice that has protected you these past few months, she can strengthen the planet against invaders.”

“But how can we survive inside her?” the first refugee asked. “We need light, and food, and air. How can she provide these things?”

“Vitzkug provided them for my people,” Gloxtov said, ears pulled back slightly. “She will surely provide for you.”

“Yeah, sorry to interrupt this discussion,” Lance interjected. His eyes were screwed up with concentration. Coran took a step forward, but Lance shook his head, closing his eyes. “Vitzkug wants to say a few words.” He laughed. “She’s a little impatient.”

Before anyone could react, orange light began glowing from between Lance’s fingers. Lance pulled his hands away from his body, and the light began sprouting from his chest like vines. Lance grunted, and two more vines, this time colored bright blue, began to grow out of his chest, twisting and swirling around the orange. The vines of light twisted up, curling around his shoulders and his back, before slowly growing away from his body.

The vines swirled around Shiro and Allura’s shoulders, before spreading to Gloxtov, then Keith, Pidge, Hunk, and Coran. The vines began growing outward, too. They twisted around those in the front row before slowly spreading through the crowd. 

It was beautiful. The blue and orange twisted in intricate patterns, curling around shoulders, chests, heads, arms, and legs. Bubbles of energy that looked like flowers or leaves would grow upon the vines at random spots, the movement of the refugees causing ripples in the vines, making it look like it was alive.

It was mesmerizing to watch. 

Eventually, the alien farthest from them was wrapped as well. There was a moment of silence, then Lance opened his eyes. Coran’s eyes widened.

They were a solid blue. 

Lance took a deep breath, then released it in a rush. Ripples of light spread from him to the vines. Coran became aware of a flower blooming near his heart. The energy hit the vine he was wrapped in, and the flower pulsed, before pressing into his chest.

Suddenly, Coran could no longer feel the ground. Black surrounded him, but it didn’t seem scary or unsettling. The black felt comforting, like a hug from arms that were too great to see.

_ I will keep you safe _ , a voice spoke. It was warm and comforting, cool and gentle, like sunlight shining on a clear pond.  _ I will protect you the way I have protected the rest _ .

Images filled Coran’s mind. He saw a woman with blue fur and smaller versions of Gloxtov’s ears. Her eyes were solid orange, a pink nose (it reminded Coran of the animals Lance had shown him from Earth called rabbits) in the center of her slim face. There was a smile on her lips, and a she wore a silver necklace that held a large blue stone in the middle of her chest. Silver jewelry circled her bare arms and fingers, and silver crown not unlike Allura’s sat on her head. One of her ears was pierced with a gold earring. Her white dress rustled in the wind, exposing her bare feet and silver anklets that were set with green, black, red, and yellow stones. 

Suddenly, the Blue Lion appeared behind her, and green grass suddenly appeared for them all to stand on. The woman reached up with her hands just as Lance had, covering the stone on her chest, and blue light sprouted from her cupped hands. She extended her arms, and the blue light wrapped around her fingers, slowly growing until she held a spear in her hands.

The weapon was blue, the spearhead and base of the weapon a silver that matched her jewelry. She spun the spear in her hands, nimble fingers bringing it to set at her side, as she brought her left hand up and twisted. A blue stone set in her bracelet glowed and a shield shimmered into existence. 

The woman smiled, warm and caring, and suddenly there were others beside her.

A man stood directly to her right, red fur rippling under his white shirt and shorts, a smile on his face. He wore the same jewelry as the woman, but his crystals were red. In his hand he held a great sword, the tip of the red blade resting in the grass and hands leisurely grasping the silver handle. 

To his right was another man, his fur white and clothes a deep black. His eyes were yellow and his jewelry gold, set with black jewels while black gauntlets covered his hands. He smashed them together, as another woman appeared to his right. 

This woman was green, yellow eyes sparkling as her silver jewelry glowed in the light. She held a dagger in her hand, white dress billowing in the breeze. To her right was another woman, fur white with the same silver jewelry, a golden bow held loosely in her hands. 

The other lions appeared behind them and Coran realized that these were the paladins of the past. The first woman must have been Vitzkug.

_ We protected the universe together _ , Vitzkug’s voice flowed over him again.  _ We saved many worlds, and brought a time of peace to the universe. _

Suddenly, the light shifted. The lions and green and yellow paladins disappeared as night fell, the grass becoming a sandy desert as Vitzkug lunged forward, putting the Red Paladin behind her. She stabbed at the Black Paladin with her spear as he turned and punched her shield. Their clothes were no longer clean and flowing, but tattered and dirty. Purple blood dripped from a cut beneath Vitzkug’s eye as she grimaced, cuts along the Black Paladin’s arms and legs showing they had been at it for a while.

_ My brother tricked me, _ Vitzkug continued.  _ He took me and my husband to a barren planet and stole my lion from me _ .

The Black Paladin dissolved along with the spear and shield. Vitzkug sunk to her knees, hands coming up to cover her face and her body wracked with sobs. The Red Paladin followed her down and held her shoulders as she cried, his eyes closed with sorrow.

_ However, I was determined to not let him win. We would not die here. _

Vitzkug stood again, eyes filled with tears but a look of determination on her face. She lifted her right hand above her head, blue water slowly being pulled from the sky to swirl around her fingers. Her tears began to float up, and she looked at the sky. She closed her eyes for a second, before opening them once again.

The water turned a bright orange, and she slammed her hand downward, her body glowing orange. The water hit the sand as a jagged shard of ice and pushed downward, her body slowly dissolving and pressing it down into the sand. The red Paladin grasped for her, but she slipped through his fingers like water. Coran felt himself falling, watching as Vitzkug tunneled into the ground. 

_ This planet’s core is made entirely of water. I simply had to change the quintessence it held. _

The ground around Vitzkug suddenly opened up, and she plummeted into the water below. There was a splash, Vitzkug disappearing into the depths. A few moments passed, then the orange began to spread out. It changed the water to that bright orange color, before it solidified into ice. Large stalactites extended, pushing up into the dirt. They opened tunnels, and built great caverns in the rock and sand.

One stalactite broke the surface, startling the Red Paladin to his feet. Purple tears dripped from his eyes and he stepped back, fear and wonder mixing as he watched the orange pillar grow. It stopped moving and he stared. Some of the ice shifted, forming and door. The light changed, and Vitzkug materialized as an energy spectre. She smiled, extending her hand to him. 

The Red Paladin watched her for a second, before a sad smile broke over his face. He stepped forward and took her hand, stepping into the icy doorway and pressing his forehead again Vitzkug’s. He laughed, fresh tears falling from his eyes.

_ When I became a paladin of Voltron, _ Vitzkug’s voice explained as the scene darkened,  _ I swore that I would protect those who could not protect themselves. _

The scene changed to a small family of green creatures, their many limbs clutching each other as they watched a crashed ship burning before them. Coran felt terror streaming off of them. An orange pillar grew behind them, and the creatures twisted, their terror intensified. A door opened in the icy pillar and revealed the Red Paladin, his fur turning silver with age and eyes sad. He smiled and extended his hand, welcoming them into safety.

The creatures paused, looking between him and the ship. Finally, they stood, the larger ones carrying the smaller and hurt ones towards the Red Paladin.

_ I kept my promise. _

The memories became a blur, only flashes of scenes registering.

_ Any creature that landed on my planet was welcomed if they had no intent to harm. _

Coran saw yellow creatures, their eyes scared and chains hanging from their wrists running from a ship above. Then there were white creatures, their skin hanging off their bones as one of them collapsed, dragged themselves away from a downed pod. Then there were small black animals, tentacles growing from their entire bodies as green blood oozed from their wounds.

_ Over time, the refugees I held would heal. Some would leave, flying off to return to families they had left behind. Others would stay, and I would make a home for them within me.  _

Coran watched as time sped past, tens of thousands of years flying by. He saw children playing, women laughing, men chasing various pets through the streets in an ancient game. There were groups who went above into the dirt to pick fruits to return, groups that would build houses or make clothes, groups that would play games or put on shows for entertainment. In every scene, he could feel Vitzkug’s pride. 

These people were her children. 

_ When the Galra came, I wanted to chase them away. _

The memories changed to the many creatures standing on her surface, watching the Galra ships land as their clothes blew in the wind. Vitzkug’s voice became bitter.

_ Their energy was corrupted, just as my brother’s had been. But my people told me to trust. The only people who had arrived in their lifetimes had been friendly and in need of help or directions. They told me to give these visitors a chance, and to trust that they were kind. _

_ So I did. _

A woman in a flowing purple cloak exited the ship, her yellow eyes glowing. Coran felt recognition flare across the back of his mind. It wasn’t Vitzkug. It felt like one of the paladins knew her.

_ It was a mistake. _

The woman raised her head, her face contorting into an ugly smile. She raised her hands, and lightning shot from her fingertips. The sand flew and pain resonated through Vitzkug as her people ran. Soldiers descended from the sky, trapping everyone while Vitzkug was unable to stop it.

_ The Witch’s quintessence is very similar to mine. _ Vitzkug said as the scene faded to black.  _ If she had my water, she could use it to become more powerful. Before I could defend my people, she took my ability to manipulate the world in which my soul rested. I could only watch as my people were taken from me and those they brought slowly died as they killed me. _

_ But then, just as the last of me was disappearing, my lion returned to me. _

The scene suddenly opened to Blue flying over the sandy expanse, Galra fighters on her tail. Blue suddenly shot upwards, flying just above a giant rock before diving in, navigating through tunnels as she lost the fighters following her. She landed, and Coran felt Vitzkug shifting closer, entering the familiar cockpit.

Inside, he saw Lance, who was saying something, but no noise was heard. Coran felt happiness explode at a way to survive, to live on and hopefully save her people. He felt her reach into Lance, feeling the quintessence within him resonating with her. She swam in it, and joy filled her heart when she felt Blue’s thrumming through Lance.

The scene changed again. Lance was floating through space, limp and barely conscious. Galra soldiers held his arms, and Coran felt Lance’s panic. 

_ I had Blue create the ice barrier in the sky, _ Vitzkug said as the ice expanding from Lance began to fill the sky, freezing friend and foe alike. 

_ I knew if you were frozen, then the new paladins would find us and free us. _

Glances of the Castle of Lions setting down on the ice, of the lions trekking through the sand, of the paladins talking with Borp, Gloxtov, and Kyrztak around the fire flashed past. Then he saw the paladins freeing the last ship.

_ During the time I was frozen, Blue and Lance healed me.  _ Vitzkug’s voice was soft and kind as the black engulfed Coran again.  _ They gave me back the power to control the water and to project my soul using the air of this planet. And now, we have come up with a plan. _

The ice sky filled Coran’s vision again. It remained blue for a moment before turning a brilliant orange. The ice unfroze, and water began falling from the sky like the rain Lance had told him about all those months ago. 

_ In the tongue from my homeworld, _ Vitzkug explained as the droplets fell from the sky,  _ my name meant ‘desert rain.’ It was a name given only to those who had earned the respect of the Blue Lion, and only to those who would never stop fighting to protect the weak. I have worn the name proudly for a millenia. I will continue to do so. _

The water soaked into the ground, digging beneath the sand to flood the space where the water used to rest. It solidified, once again forming tunnels and filling the caverns it had made before. It made houses, and healed the fruit trees in the upper layers that had long since faded.

_ If you stay, I will protect you. If you go, you will have my blessing. But no matter what, Vitzkug will always stand to protect those who cannot fight the darkness themselves. _

The vision faded. Coran slowly became aware of his body again, the vines of energy bursting into bubbles that floated into the sky and disappeared. 

All were quiet, feeling the words of Vitzkug wash over them. Coran glanced to the side to see tears falling from Allura’s eyes. Shiro was looking at his hands, Pidge and Hunk sharing a glance. Keith stared at Lance’s back.

Lance’s eyes were closed. He opened them slowly, his blue gaze back to irises and pupils. He watched the refugees slowly coming out of their daze, kindness in his eyes.

“It’s a lot to process, I know,” he said gently. “Take a few minutes, and think about her offer. You don’t have to decide now.”

Coran furrowed his brow. “There’s more?”

Lance turned to him, smiling apologetically. “Unfortunately, we have to time the rain so we can make the Galra think the planet is completely abandoned.”

Quiet fell over the group again, as each person tried to comprehend what Vitzkug had told them. 

After a while, when most of the group seemed to be back in reality, Lance spoke again.

“During the time while we were all asleep, The Galra were trying to break the ice,” he said. “Vitzkug and Blue fortified it, but we know they’ll come back try see what happened to their base and all their prisoners. So, to keep them from searching the planet, we’re going to destroy all the ships.”

That got everyone’s attention. 

“Those of you who choose to stay will be hidden underground, while those who plan to leave will stay in the Castle.” Lance continued. “With the lions, we’ll drop the sky and heal Vitzkug. Then, we’ll wait until the Galra come near. We’ll get their attention, and draw them away. Like this, they will believe that the other Paladins of Voltron came to pick up Blue, trashed all the ships, and then took off. They’ll probably assume that you all died when I froze the planet.”

“Wouldn’t those who chose to leave Vitzkug be in danger, then?” a refugee spoke up. 

“Only slightly,” Lance said. “Voltron can shield the Castle long enough for Allura to make a wormhole, and then we’ll teleport to somewhere safe before giving you all pods. Any more questions?”

They watched the crowd, but when no questions arose, Allura stepped forward.

“The ice barrier will protect us for another day. Today, the paladins will destroy the ships and we will tend to any injuries we still need to. Tomorrow, you will choose to either leave or stay. Then, we will enact our plan.”

There were nods of assent. Coran lowered the platform, allowing the refugees to meander in and out of the castle. The paladins agreed to meet up in an hour to begin destroying the ships, then Shiro and Pidge wandered off to find Matt and Sam. Hunk and Keith went with Allura to check on the prisoners, and Gloxtov went with them. 

Coran and Lance were left alone near the door. Coran watched Lance’s face, trying to read what the boy was feeling. Lance’s face was set in a calm smile, his eyes fixed on the crowd. After a few ticks, he noticed Coran’s stare and flashed him a bright smile.

“Don’t worry, Coran,” Lance laughed, slapping his hand on Coran’s back reassuringly. “I’m fine. Just a little tired from channeling Vitzkug, is all.”

“I would certainly think so,” Coran smiled back. “Reaching so many minds for so long must be very tiring.”

Lance cocked his head. “I only channeled her for a few ticks, Coran.”

“Really?” Coran stroked his moustache. “It felt much longer.”

“Well, the mind typically processes things pretty fast, you know.” Lance turned back to the aliens. “Well, human and Altean brains do. I think that’s why some of the refugees had to take a bit. They were still listening to her.”

Coran hummed, watching the refugees come and go from the door of the castle. It reminded him a lot of that night on Arus, and Coran felt a familiar pang of guilt sound through him.

“You’re quite amazing, you know.” Coran spoke so softly he wasn’t sure if Lance had heard.

Lance looked at him, confusion on his face. “What?”

Coran smiled. “I mean, the paladins of Voltron have always been quite amazing. I’ve seen them pull whole planets out of the course of black holes, defeat armies that outnumbered them ten to one in only a matter of ticks, and bring peace and prosperity throughout the universe.

“But I’ve never seen them do quite what you humans have done. You entered a war that was only moments from being won that wasn’t even yours to begin with, and turned the tides. You took up the mantle of paladins even though you knew you’d never get to go home just so you could protect people and planets you didn’t even know existed. You stormed Zarkon’s fortress, the most heavily fortified ship in the entire known universe, just to save a Princess who you had only known for a month. And somehow, you won.”

Coran looked up to the sky, admiring the ice that hung there, protecting them. 

“You humans keep surprising me.” He continued, his voice distant. “Shiro was held captive by the Galra for a year, and he has so many physical and mental scars I don’t know if he’ll ever fully recover, but he didn’t even hesitate to start the fight against them and charge directly into where all his previous captors held the most power. He dove in headfirst and used the things that Galra did to him to help him defeat them, whether it was mental scarring or an arm he doesn’t think of as part of himself.

“Pidge left her desperate search to find her family in favor of fighting alongside you all, even though finding her family was the only thing she had thought about for years and even pretended to be a boy in order to accomplish her goal. She put the families of people she had never met before her own. She’s made so many modifications to the lions and accomplished so much that I’m surprised she hasn’t solved every problem in the universe by now.

“Hunk overcame his fear of flying and fighting after he saw how horribly shay and her people were living. He fought life and limb to protect people he’d only met for a day and one of whom had betrayed him. He treats all with a caring I thought only King Alfor was capable of, and he has accepted the possibility of never going home so that he can save those Zarkon has imprisoned.

“Keith took Zarkon on all on his own because he thought he could end the suffering, pain, and death that he spread throughout the galaxy. Even when he saw that Zarkon was capable of taking the Red Lion on with nothing but a bayard, he kept fighting, believing that he would win even though there was no way he could. He spent the last three months training to be stronger, and watching the tracers on every lion we could find, making sure that everyone was okay. He trained so he could win next time, and didn’t let a loss stop him for even a second. He only let it drive him harder to win.”

Coran turned to Lance, his eyes shining. “And you. You got into an alien warship you found hiding on your planet and used it to fight the Galra before you even knew what the Galra were. You are so homesick you almost cry, but you never ask to go home. You jumped in front of a bomb to shield an alien you had only just met, and trust everyone, even though we’re in the middle of a war. And look at where we’re standing! You created an impossibly large layer of ice that protected hundreds of innocent people just because you care so strongly about protecting them. You’re going to bring a planet back from the dead just to give them a home! How incredible is that?”

Coran swallowed, turning his gaze out over the paladins as they looked over the refugees, smiles on their faces as they took care of creatures they didn’t even know the names of.

“I’m sad that Altea’s gone. I miss my people, and my family, and my home. But if my new family is made up of Allura and these humans so amazing I never know what’s coming next, then, maybe, it’ll be okay. Maybe I can make a new home. And maybe, it’ll last forever.”

A moment of silence passed between them. Coran glanced at Lance to see what his reaction was.

He wasn’t expecting tears to be streaming down Lance’s face.

“Lance?” Coran reached up, worried he’d overstepped his bounds.

“That’s…” Lance sniffed, bringing his hand up to wipe his eyes. “That means a lot to me, Coran.” Lance brought his other hand up and scrubbed harder at his face. 

“Thank you.” Lance looked up, his eyes still watery but a smile on his face.

“No,” Coran smiled back. “Thank  _ you _ .”

Coran wasn’t expecting the hug, but he returned it with vigor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How was that for Coran love? I know when I posted Let Him Rest a lot of people were excited about Coran so here's some more!
> 
> Like I mentioned above, I've now got three unfinished fics that are all one chapter from completion. I want to get them all out (or at least written) before the 20th, since I'm expecting to temporarily fall off the face of the earth following the season 2 release. (Seriously. I physically collapsed after watching the season two trailer and again after the first two minutes were released. I am waaaaay too excited about this but I just can't stop.) I'm gonna focus on writing the last chapter of this fic first, though, as well as it's oneshots. I'm gonna finish part three (Let Him Rest isn't actually part 3, lol) and post it by the end of the week, since it's one of the title fics.
> 
> However, for the end of He Sleeps and the following 3 ficlets, I'm going to set a posting schedule! (Shocking, I know.) Starting on Monday, I'll be releasing a ficlet a day and then the last chapter of this on thursday, to celebrate the release. Let's see if I can actually keep the schedule, lol.
> 
> (The Monster and Break a Leg will just come whenever, idk.)
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading! It means a lot! I love reading your comments and basking in the kudos!
> 
> Thank you for reading, and see you next chapter!


	19. Into the Unfrozen Sky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S STILL THE 19TH HERE AND THEREFOR I'M NOT LATE HA HA.
> 
> Okay but for real, I went to start writing this two days ago and I wrote a scene that was never supposed to go in here??? I guess my love for Hunk just overflowed so much I just had to celebrate his birthday. So then I had to rework everything and I've been super busy so yay! I got it out! Whooooo!
> 
> Quick forewarning: I finished writing this about ten minutes ago. I have edited it, but it isn't at it's best. Also, I suck at writing endings. So bare with me. I might write an epilogue if I just cannot go on anymore letting it go but idk. I already have two multi-chapter fics I haven't even started I want to do so. 
> 
> So, here we go! This series began with Keith, you bet my last update is gonna be Keith! (I love circles in writing lol)
> 
> Here we go, one last time!

Keith had to admit, destroying the ships felt good. 

After all the anxiety, stress, worry, and  _ waiting _ that Keith had been doing the past three months had started driving him crazy. He’d tried to get his worries out in the training room, but he knew the gladiators weren't actually destroyed, and it felt like a hollow victory when Coran and Allura watched him like he was killing himself.

But this, this was great. 

With every shot, every inch of melted metal, every ship he slammed into, Keith could feel the anger and worry leaving his body. He laughed, double teaming a larger ship with Hunk, the excited cries over the coms telling him that he wasn’t the only one enjoying this. They all had stress to let off. It was like group therapy and saving hundreds of people it one go.

Keith couldn’t think of anything better. 

“I think that there’s only one left,” Shiro panted. Keith could still hear the lightness in his voice.

“Let’s all hit it together!” Lance said, his voice shining. “Make one big kaboom as we rush it from all sides!”

“I’m down!” Pidge said.

“Same here!” Hunk said.

“Let’s do it!” Keith said.

“Alright,” Shiro laughed. “I’ll take the top. Get in position. We’ll go on my mark.”

Keith angled his lion downward and flew towards the remaining ship. They set it up so he was facing the bow of the ship, Pidge on the opposing sides and Lance and Hunk on the larger side.

“Everybody ready?”

“Yeah!” came the chorus of replies.

“Alright. On three.” Keith could see Shiro angle Black into a nosedive. “One. Two. Three!”

Keith gunned the blasters, opening Red’s mouth to shoot a stream of lava at the defeated purple ship. Keith melted the hull until ice started to form at the edges . He cut off the stream and angled sharply upwards. He felt Red barely scrape the edge of the ship, seeing the other lions fly upwards at the same time as him. 

Keith felt a laugh bubbling from his throat as he shot upwards, the icy sky glittering above. 

He didn’t think he’d been this happy in a long time

* * *

 

The next day, it appeared that about half of the refugees decided to stay. There was a lot of voting, and counting, and talking, and eventually it was decided that Gloxtov, being the final remaining Vitzkugian on planet, would be the leader of their new base. Gloxtov had of course blushed, hiding his face with all three hands when Lance gently punched his arm. Jagis and Flinx had both decided to stay as well, and, being royalty and used to being in charge of planets, said that they were willing to help guide Gloxtov should he need it. Kyrztak and Borp wanted to stay too, and Gloxtov had almost cried again when they had showed him their support.

After the deciding and breaking up of groups, the paladins had begun the long arduous process of transferring the majority of the prisoners into the caves below. They had used lions, pods, and various other things they found about the castle to transport all the people into the upper tunnels where they wouldn’t be washed away by the oncoming tidal wave that was sure to fall when the ice barrier was dropped. 

After the last refugees was deposited into the dark caves below, and those staying with the castle were secured for flight, the lions took their positions. Blue and Lance flew up onto the ice, the rest standing guard around the Castle of Lions to keep it from drifting away, should the torrent be more vigorous than expected. 

Keith sat in Red, watching the sky. Blue and Lance had disappeared long ago, the ice swallowing them whole. The planet was quiet, everyone holding their breaths and only the wind and sand shifted as far as he could see.

“How much longer is Lance going to be?” Pidge said finally, breaking the silence. 

“I don’t know,” Hunk said. “It’s not like any of us know what this requires.”

“Well, for all we know, he’s asleep,” Pidge said. Keith pulled up the visuals, seeing the three other paladins and Blue’s empty cockpit. “He should be done by now, right?”

“Magic is very sensitive,” Coran said. A feed of him and Allura in the castle popped up on Keith’s dash, the man stroking his moustache. “It could take minutes or it could take years.”

“Years?!” Pidge groaned and leaned back. 

“I’m sure it won’t take years,” Shiro sighed. “Lance wouldn’t have suggested it if it took that long.”

“It doesn’t _ normally _ take years,” Lance’s voice ground through the coms. “But if you keep talking and distracting me it just might.”

Quiet settled down over them all, Lance’s annoyed tone sealing all of their mouths. Long seconds dragged on, Keith just watched the desert before him. 

It was incredibly boring.

“Do you think we can pull up a feed on the outside of the lion?” Pidge said. She must have switched it to go to everyone but Lance, because no annoyed retort came on the heels of the suggestion.

“Let’s see,” Allura said, leaning over the screen in the castle and rustling around. 

There was the sound of buttons being pushed and then a seventh screen popped up on the dash, pushing Blue’s empty cockpit out of frame. In the new screen, Keith could see Lance sitting with his legs crossed in the middle of one of the giant caverns.

Keith felt his breath catch. Some of the pillars were liquefying, the water they became floating across the space to circle around Lance, his head bowed and face turned away from them. Currently there were three circles swirling in the air, the columns quickly forming a fourth that would circle all of the others.

“Oh, pretty,” Hunk said, and the water immediately dropped. 

On the screen, they saw Lance grab his helmet in both hands and chuck it as far as he could across the cavern, his frustrated grunt cut off my distance. Lance settled back down, not able to hear Hunk’s quick sorry as the water began to float again.

They sat in silence, then, watching the water swirl around him, the smaller rings quick and the larger ones massive and rotating slowly. They reminded Keith of the orbiting of planets, as if Lance was the sun and the whole solar system revolved around him.

Finally, a fifth circle was completed. They swirled in unison for a moment before tilting sharply, twisting up so each circle became an arch. What happened from there was a little unclear from the angle of the camera, but the whole thing somehow merged into a large ball of blue water that sparkled in the light.

Lance extended his hands above his head, fingers splayed and palms bare. The water extended two trendles of water, which snaked through the air and twined themselves around his fingers. The water twisted and knotted up to just above his elbows before everything paused. There was a beat of silence, and then the water touching Lance’s skin began to turn the bright orange that Keith had come to associate with Vitzkug. 

The orange spread, slowly filtering out the blue in the water and tainting it orange. Once every trace of blue had left the large ball of water the trendles retracted, forming what looked like a giant floating ball of orange juice that hovered above Lance. Lance’s hands fell to his side, and he watched as the orange twisted and moved to put Lance between itself and Blue. 

After a few seconds Keith could see legs and arms forming, and before long a watery and shifty version of Vitzkug. She smiled, extending a hand and helping Lance to his feet. She stooped, a trendle of water grabbing the discarded helmet and handing it to him. Lance paused, saying something. Vitzkug’s smile widened and she bowed slightly, Lance mirroring the movement before turning on his heel and slipping his helmet back on. Behind him, Vitzkug sunk into the ice, turning it a bright orange that quickly spread.

“Alright, guys,” Lance said, his voice light. “Get ready.”

Keith looked out his window as Coran closed the screens, watching the orange quickly overtake the blue in the ice. Orange spread quickly, changing the light on the planet to be something harsher, yet warmer and more welcoming. 

Keith nudged Red into a standing position, preparing for the onslaught. 

At first nothing happened, but then water began to fall, staining the yellow sand a dark brown. It spread, the rain getting faster and faster and faster. The droplets became thicker and thicker until, finally, it was a downpour outside. 

Lance’s wild screams of joy drew Keith’s eyes to his dashboard. Lance was laughing, a crazy light in his eyes as Blue was clearly moving. Keith had only a second before he felt Red shift, the ground under him quickly be replaced by the rising water.

“Um, Lance?” Hunk’s nervous voice came over the coms. “What’s happening?”

“Vitzkug just wants to take you all for a ride, is all,” Lance cackled. “She said she’ll leave the castle alone, but she wants to play with the lions like she used to.”

“I’m not sure if I’m willing to play with her,” Hunk replied. Lance just laughed.

Keith tried to maneuver Red, but she seemed to be resisting him. Maybe she really wanted to play with Vitzkug.

Keith braced, feeling the ground fall out from under him. There were mining tunnels not too far from them. Vitzkug must have pulled them over one. As he fell, he saw flashes of the refugees watching from their sheltered caves. He was expecting a rough landing, something that would hurt a lot, but Vitzkug caught him, gently washing Red over to the side. The bobbing was calming in a way, but from the way Hunk and Pidge were screaming he didn’t think the feeling was shared among them all. 

Red broke surface, the water pushing her up until the giant warship was sitting on an icy floor in a giant cavern. He couldn’t see the other four lions around him because of how dark it was, but Lance’s cackling was still ringing in his ears. Keith felt a smile spread over his lips despite himself.

“Oh! Guys, wait!” Lance said, sitting forward in his seat. “This is the coolest part!”

Keith opened his mouth to ask was ‘this’ was, when a light from below stole his attention. He looked down, seeing the ice begin to glow from within. An orange light began to fill the room, so similar to sunlight that Keith almost felt like he was outside. It spread over the ice, filling the room until it was just as bright as it had been above ground. 

Keith looked around in awe.

The icy cavern was huge, a water pillar collecting the refugees and bringing them into the large room. Meanwhile, the rest of the water was twisting, forming a huge cave system in which all these people would live. 

It was amazing.

Keith saw movement from the corner of his eye. He turned to see Lance exiting the Blue lion, running up to Gloxtov and the others. Keith decided it was best to exit, too. When his feet hit the ground he expected to slip, but the ice was rough and bumpy, providing plenty of traction. Keith had a feeling Vitzkug had shifted the ground to make it easier for all of them.

When he came up to the group, Lance had stepped back from the five aliens that were closest, a wide grin on his face. The other refugees were forming a circle around their new leaders and those that saved them, preparing for their final goodbyes.

“Allura says that there’s a Galra ship headed this way,” Shiro said, coming up to Lance’s other side. “We’ll wait until they’re close enough to see us leave, then we’ll take off.” He offered a reassuring smile.

Gloxtov returned it in kind. “Thank you so much, Paladins of Voltron. You have our thanks.”

“Oh!” Lance jumped, fishing something out of his back pocket. “I meant to give this to you earlier!” He pulled out a grey communicator, not unlike the ones Allura had given to Shay and the Arusians. He handed it to Gloxtov, smiling when the alien’s eyes turned to confusion.

“It’s a communicator,” Lance said. “If you ever feel like one paladin of Voltron isn’t enough to protect you, call us using that, and you’ll have five more.”

Gloxtov blinked, a giant smile breaking splitting his face.

“We plan to find the rest of your people,” Keith said, smiling, too. “When we do, we’ll send them your way. Any refugees who want to come live with you, too.”

Gloxtov nodded. “We are forever indebted to you,” he said, bowing deeply. The others followed suit.

“Please,” Shiro said. “This isn’t necessary. It’s just what we do.”

Gloxtov rose, looking back into their eyes. “Then we wish you safe travels as you defeat Zarkon,” he said sagely.

The paladins turned, heading back to their lions. Gloxtov surged forward, wrapping all three arms around Lance, tears in his eyes. Lance cocked his head.

“I am so glad that you did not leave us,” Gloxtov said, his face buried into Lance’s side. 

Lance smiled, hugging him back. “I am, too.”

They made their way to the lions and slid into their pilot seats, smiles on their faces.

“The Galra ship is now close enough that they can see the surface of the planet,” Allura said when they were all situated. Her voice was light, like someone holding off on celebrating a game they had practically won. “We’re beginning liftoff sequence.”

“You know what that means,” Shiro said, practically laughing. “Let’s form Voltron!”

“Yeah!”

Keith lifted off, shooting out of the mining shaft and into the now unfrozen sky. He was vaguely aware of the ice closing behind him, but then we was caught up in the process of forming Voltron. 

He maneuvered, feeling his heart connecting with his friends in a way he had never realized he missed. He felt the determination of Shiro, the pulsing on his heart a beat for the rest of them to follow. He felt the curiosity and energy of Pidge, the vines of her mind wrapping around the stones around her and tying them together. He felt the strength of Hunk, his heart a solid foundation upon which they rested their hopes and hearts. And, after so long, he felt the love of Lance, the coolness of his soul flowing through them all, filling in all the cracks and making them solid, firm, and immovable.

They were complete.

They were whole.

A Keith never wanted to be separated again.

* * *

 

After the team had successfully drawn the Galra away from Vitzkug, they had popped through a wormhole. On the other side, they prepared pods for all the refugees, sending the pods out into the stars, warm wishes on their tongues. 

When the last pod had disappeared from sight, Shiro and Pidge decided they would show Sam and Matt around the castle. Keith smiled, seeing the happiness in their eyes as the four headed out together, laughter in their voices. Everyone had sort of collectively agreed that they would let the four of them hang out and bond for a while before attempting to break them up. After all the heartache it had caused, they deserved the catch-up time and then some. 

Allura and Coran headed out towards the control room, scanning for any Galra presence so they could figure out what their next mission would be. Lance yawned and headed for his room, saying something about personal hygiene and being frozen not working together well. Hunk began heading for the kitchen, clearly about to cook something up for all of them, and Keith followed him.

Normally, Keith would have headed to the training room. It was his go-to place when he had nothing to do. Keith didn’t really feel like he was really that essential off mission, so he liked to keep out of everybody’s way by training and practicing and bettering himself for the times he needed to be. 

Today, however, he figured he could help Hunk again. After having just gotten the team back together, he didn’t want to be alone. Not right now. Not while having a full and bustling castle was such a novelty. 

Hunk only smiled when Keith followed him, and he had a feeling it was because Hunk didn’t really want to be alone either. When they entered the kitchen, Hunk began rustling around, pulling out pots and pans and spices and herbs. 

“Do you need any help right now?” Keith asked, standing awkwardly in the doorway. 

“Not in particular,” Hunk replied. He spun around, having put on an apron and with a wooden spoon in his hand. “But I could use the company.”

Keith smiled. He crossed the small space and took a seat at the counter so he could watch Hunk work. Hunk busied himself, bringing out plants that Keith couldn’t even begin to understand the names of, humming the whole time.

“So,” Hunk said after a while. “How did you fare these past few months?”

Keith started slightly, having not expected the question. “Oh, um, okay I guess?” Keith thought for a second, then nodded. “Considering the circumstances probably the best I could have been.”

Hunk laughed. “That’s good. I’m glad you’re okay.” 

There was a slight lull. Keith could tell they both wanted to continue the conversation, but couldn’t think of how.

“How...how did you do?” Keith asked awkwardly.

“Same a you, I guess,” Hunk said. He picked up a bowl and began stirring it with something vaguely akin to a whisk. 

The silence dragged on again, becoming more and more awkward as it continued. 

“Do you ever miss home?” Hunk said suddenly. 

Keith sighed internally. Hunk had finally broken the silence, but he wasn’t exactly the happiest at what he chose.

“I mean, not really.”

Hunk stopped at that, turning around to watch him. “Why not?”

Keith ducked his head. “There’s not really a whole lot there for me,” he said slowly, inspecting the counter. He could feel Hunk’s eyes on him. “I didn’t have a family or anything.”

“You had no one?” Hunk’s voice was a weird timber. Keith couldn’t quite place it. “No one at all?”

“Well,” Keith glanced towards the door, “I guess Shiro was about it, really. But he’s not on Earth, either.”

Hunk was quiet for a second before the sounds of cooking started up again. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to change that.”

Keith looked back in surprise, but only saw Hunk’s back as he was bent over the opposite counter.

“What?”

Hunk turned, a small glob of something purple on his face and a sack of something in his hands. 

“You not having a family on Earth,” Hunk said, like it was obvious. “We can introduce you to all of ours. I know that my family would love to meet you. And I’m sure Lance’s would smother you. And you’ve essentially met all of Pidge’s family already.”

Keith just stared. Hunk stopped, his eyes suddenly taking on a silent panicked look to them.

“U-unless you’d rather not!” he said quickly, backtracking. “I mean, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or anything.”

Keith smiled. “No it’s fine. That’d be...that’d be nice.”

Hunk watched for a second, then flat out grinned. He opened his mouth to say something but was cut off by a loud shout.

“Holy—Hunk! Fuck!” it bounded down the hall and was accented by a slamming sound just inside the door of the kitchen. 

Keith and Hunk both turned to the door quickly, seeing Lance shakily picking himself off the floor. He was mostly dressed, his shirt pulled up around his chest as if he’d put it on in a rush and jacket nowhere to be found. He rubbed his side, then lunged across the room to grab Hunk’s hands and pull them towards himself as far as he could. Hunk watched him with wide eyes.

“Why didn’t you say anything, bro!” Lance practically yelled, panting. 

“S-say anything about what?” Hunk’s gaze was clouded with concern and confusion. 

“It’s your  _ birthday _ , man!” Lance’s eyes were shining, his grip pulling Hunk’s hands close to his heart.

Hunk’s eyes widened even more. “Wait, it is?”

Lance nodded vigorously. “I just checked that converted clock you made and I saw the date.” Lance’s face split into a huge grin. “We  _ have  _ to celebrate.”

Hunk looked a little nervous. “Um...I don’t—”

“Come on, Hunk!” Lance said. “At least let us sing to you!”

Hunk hesitated for a second. “But we’re in the middle of saving a bunch of people.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Yes, but right now we’re just waiting for Allura and Coran to figure out what we’re going to do! We totally have time to do something for your birthday, dude.”

Hunk hesitated for another moment, studying Lance closely. Then he sighed. 

“Okay…” he said slowly, twisting his fingers to pull Lance back from dashing off. “But you can only sing. I don’t want to burden anyone.”

Lance rolled his eyes again. “It’s not a burden, Hunk.”

“Still, we’re busy.”

Lance pouted. Keith had never seen a teenager  _ pout _ before. 

Hunk sighed again, deeper. “We can celebrate if you keep is small, okay?”

Lance lit up again. “Deal!”

Hunk released his fingers, and he was off again. Hunk’s eyes trailed after him, a smile on his face.

“Today’s your birthday?” Keith asked after a second. 

“I mean apparently,” Hunk said, turning to the alien equivalent of the stove and turning down the heat. 

Keith watched the door for a second. “Does he always do this?”

“He doesn’t normally slam into doors,” Hunk said, laughter in his voice. “But he gets pretty excited. He loves celebrating people’s birthdays. I’m sure he’d celebrate yours, too, if you told him when it is.”

Keith knit his brow. “Why?”

“That’s what families do.”

Keith glanced over at Hunk, watching his back for a second. Hunk’s face was hidden, but Keith knew that even if he could see it he probably wouldn’t have been able to decipher it. He looked back at the door, hearing the sounds of Lance’s loud footsteps thundering back towards the kitchen.

* * *

 

Later that night, when the castle had fallen into it’s synthetic night and everyone had settled into sleep, Keith made his way up to the control room. Laughter still sat on his chest, the taste of joyfully singing happy birthday to Hunk still on his tongue. 

Hunk had been wise to turn off the heat, since Lance had definitely  _ not _ kept his side of the deal to celebrate won a small scale. He had kicked Hunk, Keith, Coran, and Shiro out of the kitchen for about 20 minutes while he had made the fastest cake substitute he could come up with. It had been surprisingly good and Keith had no idea how he had managed. Allura, Matt, Sam, and Pidge, who had been in the room at the time, said they weren’t quite sure, either. 

However Lance had conjured up his impossible cake, they all had gathered around and sang as off key as possible. It had been the worst rendition of Happy Birthday Keith had ever heard, and he had gone to public school. Hunk had buried his face in his hands, even his wrists beat red, which was something that probably wasn’t really possible but he had found a way. 

After they had sang and eaten the cake, Hunk had demanded that they all help him cook as a present instead of actually making him ones. They had all agreed (except Coran and Allura who needed to be elsewhere) and helped him significantly until Hunk threw them out after Pidge and Matt started a foodfight. Only Keith and Lance had been allowed to remain in the kitchen, and they eventually helped Hunk finish up. Afterwards they had all crashed and burned. 

But Keith didn’t feel tired quite yet.

He wasn’t quite sure why he couldn’t sleep, but he had a feeling it had to do with a certain crazy space uncle he had developed a sixth sense for over the past few months. 

When he entered the room, he found it dark save for the swirling stars. Near the front of the room, a dark figure was huddled, the fairly bulky silhouette blocking out stars are they swirled past.

Keith quietly padded towards the person, figuring out pretty quickly that it wasn’t Coran. For one, Coran never sat when he watched the stars. For two, he never wore a blanket.

Keith stopped a few feet from the person, their eyes so focused on the stars they didn’t hear him approach.

“Lance?”

In a second, Lance was on his feet. He pivoted on his heels, whipping around to face Keith, eyes wide and hands up in a fighting position. Keith took a step back, a little unnerved.

Lance’s eyes were solid blue. They glowed slightly in the dark.

“Keith?” Lance said after a second, standing up straight and relaxing his hands. “You really shouldn’t sneak up on a guy like that, my dude.”

Keith just stared. “Your...eyes…”

Lance blinked. He brought his hand up to touch his face, staring at his fingers for a second before tapping his fingertips on his cheek. He looked back up at Keith.

“Are they weird?”

Keith swallowed, the surprise slowly wearing off. “They’re solid blue. And glowing.”

Lance looked down at the floor, his eyebrows dropped. He squeezed his eyes shut, wrinkling appearing across his face with the effort. After a few seconds, Lance opened his eyes slowly, looking back up at Keith.

“Are they normal now?”

Keith nodded, studying his blue eyes that still seemed to glow in the synthetic starlight. Lance breathed a sigh of relief. His body sagged, and he dropped down onto the ground, picking the discarded blanket up and wrapping it around his shoulders. Keith watched him for a second before taking a seat next to Lance. 

They were quiet for a little bit, Lance staring at the ground and Keith watching the stars.

“How’d you open the star map?” Keith asked after a while.

“Coran opened it back on Arus,” Lance said, still staring at the floor. “I just kinda pressed what I thought he did and it worked.” 

Keith watched the stars swirl for another second before turning to look at Lance. The blanket was bunched in his hands, which were crossed over his body. The bottom of it was tucked under his feet and legs, while the top was pulled up to his neck. Lance hand tucked his nose into the fluffy blue fabric, his eyes studying the floor.

“Why were your eyes glowing?”

Lance sighed, bringing his nose out of the blanket. He closed the blanket under his chin, tucking his hands against his neck.

“I was trying to connect really closely with Blue,” he said, eyes not leaving the floor. “We were trying to see if maybe that would help.”

“Help with what?”

Lance looked up then, his eyes sparkling in the low light.

“I’m not…” Lance bit his lip, then tried again. “You’re not supposed to be in that kind of stasis for that long. So there are bound to be a few...side effects.”

Keith knit his brow. “Side effects?” He leaned forward, trying to inspect Lance’s face. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Lance said, a little too fast. 

Keith watched him, waiting. 

“I mean,” Lance amended, “physically, I’m fine. I don’t need to go into a stasis pod or anything. I just…” Lance drew the blanket around him even more, making himself even smaller. “I can’t get warm.”

Keith’s eyebrows shot up. “This whole time?”

Lance nodded. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Lance looked up at him again. “I didn’t want you guys to worry. You’re all worriers. We had other things to worry about.”

Keith watched Lance again, studying him. Now that he knew, he saw the way Lance’s jaw twitched, the slight shaking of the blankets, the way Lance huddled over himself. 

“You’re a pretty good actor.”

Lance straightened slightly, his eyes reflecting the way they used to. “I pride myself on my theatrics, Keith. It’s one of the few things I have left.”

Keith rolled his eyes, but he still saw the way Lance huddled back over. “If you’re so cold, how were you able to act like nothing was up?”

“Vitzkug was helping at first,” Lance said. “But when she left I just slowly got colder and colder. I came up here to see if maybe I could merge with Blue and see if she could help ease it, but it didn’t really work.”

Keith watched the star for a beat. “Why’d you come up here?”

“Because it’s empty,” Lance said. “And I always feel less scared here. It’s been a very stressful few months.”

“Will this go away?”

“Blue says it should. It shouldn’t last more than a month, which is something I’m  _ not _ looking forward to.”

Keith felt the corner of his mouth twitch up against his will.

“I guess you haven’t told anyone, huh?”

Lance shook his head. “Just you.”

Keith watched him for a few more minutes, watching the way he would block out the stars and the way the shifting lights made his hair and eyes shine. 

“Do you think that it would help if someone else was there?” Keith said after a while.

Lance looked up. “What?”

“I mean.” Keith pointed at the blanket. “Would it help if someone else was in there with you?”

Lance glanced between Keith and the blanket, eyes wide. “I...I guess?”

Keith shifted slightly closer. “Can I?”

Lance shifted his arm, opening part of the blanket for Keith to slid in. Keith gripped the blanket in his hand, scooting until he was pressed against Lance’s side before bringing his hand up to seal the heat in.

Now that he was touching Lance, Keith could feel exactly how hard Lance was shivering. Keith was surprised he hadn’t vibrated down the stairs they were sitting on yet. Keith pressed in closer, slowly bringing his arm up to circle Lance’s back, giving Lance plenty of time to tell him to stop. He never did. 

They sat like that for a while, watching the stars. At some point Keith became aware that he was overheating, and he was sure his face was beat red. He shifted, opening the blanket and taking his jacket off. He felt Lance’s shivering triple at the cool air. Keith pressed in close again, draping his jacket over the blanket around Lance’s shoulders before sealing in the warmth again. 

A long silence passed.

“If you can’t handle it anymore, you’ll come ask for help, right?”

A pause. “Yeah.”

Keith looked Lance in the eyes, feeling him shiver against him.

“You promise?”

Lance looked up at him, his eyes tired and dark, but also hopeful and trusting. Keith could see the whole known universe reflected in those eyes. 

“I promise.”

They sat like that for a long time. The stars swirled by, the light lulling and calming. Lance rested his head on Keith’s shoulder, his hair tickling Keith’s ear. After a while, he realized the other boy had fallen asleep. Keith watched the stars, seeing the blue that reminded him so much of Lance’s eyes, the same color as the energy that flowed through the castle and the lions, the color of home and warmth and family and love. He sighed, resting his head against Lance’s and closing his eyes. 

Keith wasn’t mad anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CIRCLES. Okay so idk if you guys remember, but back on July 29th, I started this fic off with a very simplistic sentence and I saw the opportunity and TOOK IT. (Also I ship fucking everything. Let's play scavenger hunt to find them all lol)
> 
> Okay lol, so that's the end everybody! Thank you guys so much for reading, and commenting, and leaving kudos, and making bookmarks! It means so much to me! I think I've improved a lot as a writer, but I'm so bad at endings I feel like I might have left you guys unsatisfied. TT.TT I just kinda lost track of stuff for a bit. I might come edit it someday. Maybe add another chapter. idk. I wouldn't hold your breath, tho. (I'm kinda excited to finally get to close this google doc, tho. It's been causing my computer to lag for weeks lol.)
> 
> I just realized I posted chapter 19 on the 19th lol. Anyway, I'm glad you all finished this! I'm gonna end this with more than 50k words which is unprecedented for me! If you really liked my fic, and are interested in more, check out the rest of the oneshots in this series (if you haven't already) or any of my other fics. Or if none of those float your boat, come hang out with me on tumblr at jadencrosss! I'd love to talk to you guys, and you can make requests for ficlets and stuff. I'm pretty bored a lot lol. (I also live for validation)
> 
> Tomorrow I plan on dropping off the face of the earth when Voltron comes out tomorrow. I'm probably going to cease existing for a few weeks because I'v seen season 1 19 times and I think I have to make them even to make it fair.
> 
> Again, thank you so much for reading, and I'll be back soon! 
> 
> Till next time!


End file.
